phoneme

From Ancient Greek φώνημα (phṓnēma, “sound”), from φωνέω (phōnéō, “to sound”), from φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound”). By surface analysis, phone (“speech sound”) +‎ -eme (“unit”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfəʊ.niːm/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfoʊ.nim/

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• Rhymes: -əʊniːm

phoneme (plural phonemes)

1. An indivisible unit of sound in a given language. A phoneme is an abstraction of the physical speech sounds (phones) and may encompass several different phones.

   Hypernym: syntagma

   • 1990, Jarmo Lainio, “Sweden Finnish — development or deterioration?”, in Durk Gorter, editor, Fourth International Conference on Minority Languages: Western and Eastern European papers‎, Multilingual Matters, →ISBN, page 31:

     It is crucial for the phoneme structure of Finnish — traditionally /d/ has not been included in the Finnish phonotax, but it fulfils the criteria of a phoneme (Karlsson, 1983: 66-7).

• phoneme on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• phenome