5% of the world's languages. They tend to be extremely quiet and difficult to recognise, even for those people whose language has them.

In every case of a voiceless sonorant occurring, there is a contrasting voiced sonorant. In other words, whenever a language contains a phoneme such as , it also contains a corresponding voiced phoneme such as .

Voiceless sonorants are most common around the Pacific Ocean (in Oceania, East Asia,

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