This article is about the speech unit. For the JavaME library, see phoneME. For the collection of phenotypes, see phenome.
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This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme (/ˈfoʊniːm/) is a set of phones that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west of England,[1] the sound patterns /sɪn/ (sin) and /sɪŋ/ (sing) are two separate words that are distinguished by the substitution of one phoneme, /n/, for another phoneme, /ŋ/. Two words like this that differ in meaning through the contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair. If, in another language, any two sequences differing only by pronunciation of the final sounds [n] or [ŋ] are perceived as being the same in meaning, then these two sounds are interpreted as phonetic variants of a single phoneme in that language.
Phonemes that are established by the use of minimal pairs, such as tap vs tab or pat vs bat, are written between slashes: /p/, /b/. To show pronunciation, linguists use square brackets: [pʰ] (indicating an aspirated p in pat).
There are differing views as to exactly what phonemes are and how a given language should be analyzed in phonemic (or phonematic) terms. However, a phoneme is generally regarded as an abstraction of a set (or equivalence class) of speech sounds (phones) that are perceived as equivalent to each other in a given language. For example, the English k sounds in the words kill and skill are not identical (as described below), but they are distributional variants of a single phoneme /k/. Speech sounds that differ but do not create a meaningful change in the word are known as allophones of the same phoneme. Allophonic variation may be conditioned, in which case a certain phoneme is realized as a certain allophone in particular phonological environments, or it may otherwise be free, and may vary by speaker or by dialect. Therefore, phonemes are often considered to constitute an abstract underlying representation for segments of words, while speech sounds make up the corresponding phonetic realization, or the surface form.
substitution of one phoneme, /n/, for another phoneme, /ŋ/. Two words like this that differ in meaning through the contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal...
The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source, licensed under...
(as in top [ˈtʰɒp]) are allophones for the phoneme /t/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly...
English word through consists of three phonemes: the initial "th" sound, the "r" sound, and a vowel sound. The phonemes in that and many other English words...
in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond to the language's phonemes (the smallest units of speech that can differentiate words). Natural languages...
Phoneme Media is a Los Angeles–based nonprofit publishing house sponsored by PEN Center USA. Phoneme was founded in 2013 by translators Brian Hewes and...
Elder Futhark runic alphabet. Its transliteration is z, understood as a phoneme of the Proto-Germanic language, the terminal *z continuing Proto-Indo-European...
The Phonemes were a Canadian indie pop band from Toronto, Ontario, active in the 2000s. A trio whose core members were vocalist and songwriter Magali Meagher...
time, the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages, but may now relate to any linguistic analysis either:...
Etruscan and Latin had /h/ as a phoneme, almost all Romance languages lost the sound—Romanian later re-borrowed the /h/ phoneme from its neighbouring Slavic...
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For...
Ancient Greek γράφω (gráphō) 'write' and the suffix -eme by analogy with phoneme and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called graphemics...
on (1) the phoneme /θ/, (2) the debuccalization of syllable-final /s/, (3) the sound of the spelled ⟨s⟩, (4) and the phoneme /ʎ/. The phoneme /θ/ (spelled...
recognition systems), each phoneme, will have a different output distribution; a hidden Markov model for a sequence of words or phonemes is made by concatenating...
writing system of left-to-right. The Canaanite grapheme represented the /g/ phoneme in the Canaanite language, and as such is cognate with gimel ג of the Hebrew...
consonant phonemes and 6 vowel phonemes. All phonemes contrast between "emphatic" (pharyngealized) consonants and non-emphatic ones. Some of these phonemes have...
deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters...
for example. The point is, Arabic has only three short vowel phonemes, so those phonemes can have a very wide range of allophones. The vowels /u/ and...
particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters correspond to phonemes, the categories of sounds that can distinguish one word from another in...
in which the distribution of phonemes changes by either addition of new phonemes or a reorganization of existing phonemes. Mergers and splits are types...
that contrast in duration, thus 16 vowel phonemes in total. Vowel allophony is quite restricted. Vowel phonemes are always contrastive in word-initial syllables;...
a tooth (שנא) and represented the phoneme /ʃ/ via the acrophonic principle. Ancient Greek did not have a /ʃ/ phoneme, so the derived Greek letter sigma...
inventory of phonemes (i.e. speech sounds that distinguish meaning), and phonetic variation consists in differences in pronunciation of the phonemes. This overview...
: 10–16 A phoneme cannot occur in isolation, although a morpheme may consist of only one phoneme.: 6 There are twelve dynamic phonemes, working similarly...
languages is sorted by a partial count of phonemes (generally ignoring tone, stress and diphthongs). Estimates of phoneme-inventory size can differ radically...
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