Phoneme

Rare card · No. 66074

A phoneme ( FOH-neem) is any set of speech sounds that speakers of a language perceptually regard as a single basic sound that serves to distinguish one word from another. All languages contain phonemes (or the spatial–gestural equivalent in sign languages), and all spoken languages include both consonant and vowel phonemes. Phonemes are traditionally represented, when written, as a glyph (a character) enclosed within two forward-sloping slashes /. For example, /ɒ/ indicates the vowel phoneme, or set of possible sounds, used in the middle of the English word pot. The exact pronunciation of this phoneme varies by accent, with the pronunciation [ɔ] in many British and Australian accents, [ɑ] in many US and Irish accents, and [a] in Great Lakes accents of the US. Still, /ɒ/ counts as one phoneme, across multiple such dialects, because it contrasts with, for example, the /ʊ/ of put or /ɪ/ of pit. Within linguistics, exact pronunciations are studied under phonetics, while the abstract concept...

Read on Wikipedia