I just took a look at Sanskrit, and it doesn't represent everything. It has a larger consonant inventory than any other natural language that I've ever seen, w

I just took a look at Sanskrit, and it doesn't represent everything. It has a larger consonant inventory than any other natural language that I've ever seen, which is impressive, but that doesn't make it phonologically universal. Some things that American English has that Sanskrit doesn't include /ð/, /θ/, [ɹ] as a realization of /r/, and contrastive /v/ and /w/ (like "vein", the body part, versus "wain", the old word for a wagon; or "vine", the plant, and "wine", the beverage made from it). I'm unclear on the effects of the vowel gradations, so I don't know whether they approximate other languages' vowel inventories well. It also looks like Sanskrit doesn't have any uvular, pharyngeal, or glottal consonants, and no velar or post-velar fricatives. For example, I don't see that it could represent Hebrew חָכָם 'wise, smart' (pronounced /χa'χam/). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%9B%D7%9D#Hebrew https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%9B%D7%9D#Hebrew I could see that Sanskrit might have been the best single choice for transcribing a wide range of unrelated languages at some point in history, but now that we have IPA, we can make lots of distinctions that Sanskrit doesn't.