A phoneme is a basic unit of sound used to build a language. All spoken words are made up of one or more individual phonemes.
Only a few languages use all the sounds available to human speech. Instead, most pull from a selection of standard phonemes to create many thousand of words.
Alphabets are not always one-to-one correspondence between phoneme and letter.
Linguists often differentiate between the possible sounds a human can make and the specific sounds that affect word meaning. They typically use the term, phones, to describe speech sounds in general, and phonemes to refer to sounds that are used to build a language.
For the most part, languages do not utilize all the possible phones that the human mouth can create.
Phonemes make up the constituent parts of spoken words. Linguists have formulated a system of symbols to graphically represent phonemes. Most languages have been assigned a list of standard phonemes that represent the most common sounds used in speech. These standard sounds are combined in a variety of ways to create different words.
Only a few languages use all the sounds available to human speech. Instead, most pull from a selection of standard phonemes to create many thousand of words.
Alphabets are not always one-to-one correspondence between phoneme and letter.
Linguists often differentiate between the possible sounds a human can make and the specific sounds that affect word meaning. They typically use the term, phones, to describe speech sounds in general, and phonemes to refer to sounds that are used to build a language.
For the most part, languages do not utilize all the possible phones that the human mouth can create.
Phonemes make up the constituent parts of spoken words. Linguists have formulated a system of symbols to graphically represent phonemes. Most languages have been assigned a list of standard phonemes that represent the most common sounds used in speech. These standard sounds are combined in a variety of ways to create different words.