The Sounds of the World's Languages, sometimes abbreviated SOWL, is a 1996 book by Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson which documents a global survey of the sound patterns of natural languages. Drawing from the authors' own fieldwork and experiments as well as existing literature, it provides an articulatory and acoustic description of vowels and consonants from more than 300 languages. It is a prominent reference work in the field of phonetics.
Davis, Katherine (1998). "Peter Ladefoged & Ian Maddieson, The sounds of the world's languages". Journal of Linguistics. 34 (1): 261–264. doi:10.1017/S0022226797276899. S2CID143044779.
Kaye, Alan S. (2006). "An interview with Peter Ladefoged". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 36 (2): 137–144. doi:10.1017/S0025100306002519.
Rischel, Jørgen (1998). "Review: The Sounds of the World's Languages – Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson". Journal of Phonetics. 26 (4): 411–421. doi:10.1006/jpho.1998.0083.