phoneme

Meanings

1. 1nouncountabletechnical

   The smallest sound unit in a language that can change the meaning of a word.

   Grammar: Has a plural: phonemes.

   Patterns

   • a phoneme in something

   The words bat and pat differ in a single phoneme.

   English has about forty-four phonemes.

   Children learn to hear each phoneme in a word.

2. 2nouncountabletechnical

   A sound category that a language treats as one, even if speakers pronounce it in slightly different ways.

   Grammar: Used in linguistics: allophones belong to one phoneme.

   Patterns

   • variants of a phoneme

   The k in key and the k in cool are variants of one phoneme.

   Speakers hear one phoneme even though the sounds differ slightly.

   Each language organizes its phonemes differently.

Word forms

Common combinations

distinguish phonemes

Babies can distinguish phonemes from many languages.

phoneme awareness

Phoneme awareness helps children learn to read.

English phonemes

English phonemes include vowels and consonants.

vowel phoneme

The word has a long vowel phoneme.

phoneme inventory

Each language has a phoneme inventory.

Synonyms and how they differ

sound

Sound is everyday and general, while phoneme is a precise unit that changes meaning.

speech sound

Speech sound can be any sound spoken, but a phoneme is one that matters to meaning.

phone

A phone is a real sound produced, while a phoneme is the mental category.

segment

Segment is a broader term for any piece of speech.

Word family

phonemic adjective

relating to phonemes

phonetics noun

the study of speech sounds

phonology noun

the study of sound systems

morpheme noun

the smallest unit of meaning

allophone noun

a variant of a phoneme

Commonly confused: phoneme or morpheme? phoneme or grapheme?

Practice

Make it your own

Write a sentence using “phoneme”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.

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