A Phoneme is really a bundle of sounds called Allophones
There are approximately 41 to 48 phonemes in English depending upon the dialect etc. Spanish has less, and Hawaiian has only about 13.
Does that mean that Hawaiian is a more primitive language which is too unsophisticated to serve in todays complex society.
Definitely not! The number of phonemes in a language has no bearing on the complexity or effectiveness of the language to communicate.
Few languages if any have more than 50. However, I have unconfirmed reports of some Russian dialects in the Caucasus Mountains that have 76.
Regardless, the problem for the child is that a phoneme is not typically a single sound (phon). It may be somewhat arbitrarily made up of a bundle of sounds. One example in English is the /t/ phoneme.
NOTES: Information on some Hawaiian phonemes
NOTES: More information on allophones