word
Phoneme
FOH-neem
/ˈfoʊniːm/Listen
Hear it in a clear American voice. Slow it down to catch each syllable.
Syllable breakdown
phoneme
Dictionary meaning
The smallest unit of sound in a spoken language that can distinguish one word from another; changing a single phoneme can change the meaning of a word (e.g., the difference between 'cat' and 'bat' is a change in the initial phoneme).
Examples
- English has approximately 44 phonemes despite having only 26 letters in its alphabet.
- In Japanese, the difference between a short and long phoneme can change a word's meaning entirely.
Synonyms: speech sound unit, minimal sound unit
Common mispronunciations
Confused with morpheme; a phoneme is about sound, a morpheme is about meaning
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