counting syllables

[Frans Plank]

Exercise:

How many different syllables are there in English?


Solution:

A rough cut is to assume that English syllables are of the form
C?C?VCC??.
If we assumed that there are roughly 10 distinct vowels and 20 distinct
consonants, and assume that we have a free choice at all times then we
get an upper bound of about 20x20x1020x20 = 160,000 possible syllables.
Typical syllabic writing systems have 50-200 distinct signs (Japanese,
which has a particularly simple syllabary (nearly all open syllables
like ``ma'' ``ka'' ``no'') makes do with 48. Clearly the assumption of
independence is unwarranted in this case.

From: http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~chrisbr/dilbook/node115.html


not from me
Frans