[OJFord]

> but there are only around 400 unique sounds in Mandarin, ignoring tones. Even adding five tones still only increases this to ~1500 (not all are used). Compare this to English, where estimates are in the 10-15k range.

Sure, but English needs them because there are only around 26 letters; compare this to Mandarin, where estimates are in the 400 range.

[Dylan16807]

Why would a small number of letters make English need more syllables?

If anything, letters being overloaded limits the number of syllables we can express.

[OJFord]

I was mostly just joking/pointing out that the comparison's a bit.. not to say 'apples and oranges', but a bit arbitrary, it seemed to me could just as well be comparing letter count - or even that that makes more sense as a comparison for (disregarding tone) characters, but still arbitrary, the languages just work differently.