noun
- the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another
Usage: linguistics
Examples
- The words ‘bat’ and ‘pat’ differ by only one phoneme.
- English has about 44 phonemes depending on the dialect.
- Children learn to distinguish phonemes when developing reading skills.
- The phoneme /p/ appears at the beginning of the word ‘pig’.
- Linguists study how phonemes combine to form syllables.
- Some languages have phonemes that don’t exist in English.