The territory of Europe is too large to be, in its entirety, successfully dealt with according to all the criteria of linguistic typology, but phonological and/or phonetic questions offer good prospects. Thereby we can operate with the characteristics of phonemic inventories and specific qualities of distinctive features, distribution and incidence, as well as of combinations and mutual conditionings of those elements. In that respect the most basic is the typological boundary which divides all European dialects into one north-eastern half, with phonological relevant secondary tonality in consomantism, and one south-western half without that characteristic. Further division is achieved by recording the relevant polytonality in prosody, as well as by working out the secondary tonality not only in consomantism but also in vocalism, finally taking into consideration also the redundant presence of all those characteristics. Very interesting parallels with the northern east-Asiatic areas have been found. However, from the obtained European picture arise, on one side, certain remarks on the concept and boundaries of the European linguistic atlas (ALE), and on the other it shows that European dialects are characterized primarily by the absence of those characteristics which are not well represented in other parts of the world, i. e. by the absence of the »bizarre« phonological features (in other words, although it is not easy to say what an average European phonological system looks like, it is easy to say what it does not look like).
