RP phonemes in the Advanced Learner's Dictionary

(1974 electronic edition with Roger Mitton's 1992 additions)

Total number of words in the dictionary: 70,646
Total number of symbols in the dictionary pronunciation field: 492,745

Figures for running words in transcribed spoken text from D.B.Fry, 1947, cited in Crystal, 1995.

Vowels	Keyword	Total	Words	in dictionary	Freq. rank	in spoken text	Freq. rank
i	bead	6721	6525	1.36%	9	1.65%	7
ɪ	bid	51830	37729	10.52%	1	8.33%	2
e	bed	11312	10940	2.30%	4	2.97%	3
æ	bad	11603	11149	2.35%	3	1.45%	9
ɑ	bard	4215	4141	0.86%	14	0.79%	14
ɒ	pot	7960	7747	1.62%	6	1.37%	10
ɔ	port	4730	4627	0.96%	12	1.24%	11
ʊ	put	1977	1959	0.40%	17	0.86%	13
u	boot	4794	4743	0.97%	11	1.13%	12
ʌ	bud	7124	6917	1.45%	8	1.75%	5
ɜ	bird	3095	3083	0.63%	15	0.52%	16
ə	another	31009	26813	6.29%	2	10.74%	1
eɪ	bait	10234	10029	2.08%	5	1.71%	6
aɪ	bite	7441	7236	1.51%	7	1.83%	4
oɪ	boy	788	784	0.16%	20	0.14%	19
aʊ	cow	2179	2135	0.44%	16	0.61%	15
əʊ	no	6685	6416	1.36%	10	1.51%	8
ɪə	beer	4174	4034	0.85%	13	0.21%	18
eə	bear	965	962	0.20%	19	0.34%	17
ʊə	poor	1053	1053	0.21%	18	0.06%	20
Consonants
p	pop	15553	14569	3.16%	9	1.78%	15
b	bib	10907	10420	2.21%	11	1.97%	13
t	teat	34260	29441	6.95%	1	6.42%	2
d	died	21275	19125	4.32%	7	5.14%	3
k	cake	22453	20308	4.56%	6	3.09%	9
g	go	6239	6079	1.27%	14	1.05%	18
ʧ	chin	2672	2639	0.54%	21	0.41%	22
ʤ	judge	3869	3802	0.79%	18	0.60%	21
f	fine	8839	8606	1.79%	13	1.79%	14
v	vine	6007	5859	1.22%	16	2.00%	12
Ɵ	think	1602	1591	0.33%	22	0.37%	23
ð	then	596	593	0.12%	23	3.56%	6
s	see	33922	28548	6.88%	2	4.81%	4
z	zoo	19972	18808	4.05%	8	2.46%	11
ʃ	shy	6117	6039	1.24%	15	0.96%	19
ʒ	treasure	334	334	0.07%	24	0.10%	24
m	my	14823	13988	3.01%	10	3.22%	8
n	near	31934	27020	6.48%	3	7.58%	1
ŋ	sing	9181	8958	1.86%	12	1.15%	17
l	low	27373	25435	5.56%	4	3.66%	5
r	raw	23069	21434	4.68%	5	3.51%	7
w	west	4600	4523	0.93%	17	2.81%	10
j	year	3560	3518	0.72%	20	0.88%	20
h	high	3699	3625	0.75%	19	1.46%	16

Notes:

Column 1 contains vowel or consonant phonetic characters. Column 2 shows an illustrative keyword.
Column 3 shows the total number of occurrences of the sound in the dictionary and column 4 the number of words in which it occurred. (The difference between these two corresponds to the number of words in which the sound occurs more than once.)
Column 5 is column 3 as a percentage of 492,745, the total number of symbols in the pronunciation field in the dictionary. Column 6 shows the frequency rank of the sound, separately calculated for vowels and consonants. Columns 7 and 8 are frequency as percentage and rank for transcribed running speech.
Average number of vowel symbols per dictionary word: 2.55 or 36.3%
Average number of consonant symbols per dictionary word: 4.43 or 63.7%
Balance of vowels and consonants in connected speech sample: 39.2% : 60.8%.
Notice the difference in frequencies of consonants between the dictionary list and the speech text, partly accounted for by the high frequency of the function words with /ð/ such as the and that. The data for transcribed running speech are affected by the transcription used. The research was done a long time ago (1947) so it may be that a careful style of speech was recorded and a broad transcription used. Some evidence for this is the relatively high ranking for /h/, suggesting that the words he, his, her, have, has and had have always been transcribed with initial /h/. I have not seen the original research so cannot be sure.

References:

Crystal, David (1995). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press.
Fry, D.B. (1947). "The frequency of occurrence of speech sounds in Southern English." Archives Néerlandaises de Phonétique Experimentales, 20.

Page maintained by John Higgins. Last updated 1 November 2002.