See also
Look up phone in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
In phonetics (a branch of linguistics), a phone is any distinct speech sound . It is any surface-level or unanalyzed sound of a language, a smallest identifiable unit occurring inside a stream of speech. [1] In spoken human language, a phone is thus any vowel or consonant sound (or semivowel sound). In sign language, a phone is the equivalent as a unit of gesture.
Phones are the segments of speech that possesses distinct physical or perceptual properties, regardless of whether the exact sound is critical to the meanings of words. Whereas a phone is a concrete sound used across various spoken languages, a phoneme is more abstract and narrowly defined: any class of phones that the users of a particular language nevertheless perceive as a single basic sound, a single unit, and that distinguishes words from other words. If a phoneme is swapped with another phoneme inside a word, it can change the meaning of that word, potentially changing that word into another word (or into nonsense).
For instance, the [k] phone in the English word hick, a word transcribed as [hɪk] in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), distinguishes it from other words, like hit, hip,hiss, hitch, etc., suggesting that [k] belongs to a phoneme in English. The English words kid and kit, [kɪd] and [kɪt] in the IPA, end with two distinct sounds (phones), [ d ] ⓘ and [ t ] ⓘ , and swapping one for the other makes the one word sound like the other. Thus, in the English language, these particular phones are classifiable under two separate phonemes, transcribed as /d/ versus /t/ (slashes indicate phonemes in the IPA, while square brackets indicate phones). However, the difference between the [ ɕ ] ⓘ sound in some dialects' pronunciation of sheet and the [ ʃ ] ⓘ in shack ([ɕit] versus [ʃæk] in the IPA) never affects the meaning or identity of a word in English. Even if those particular phones are interchanged, those two words would still likely be recognized as sheet and shack by native English speakers. Therefore, the phones [ɕ] and [ʃ] do not belong to two separate phonemes in English; rather, they could be classified as two possible phonetic variations (called allophones ) of the same phoneme. In contrast, languages other than English, such as some Slavic languages like Polish or Russian, may indeed perceive [ɕ] and [ʃ] as separate phonemes.
As another example, swapping the sounds [pʰ] and [p] in the English word spin does not change its meaning. However, in Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), swapping these phones can change one word into another: for instance, [pʰal] (फल/پھل) means 'fruit', and [pal] (पल/پل) means 'moment'. [2] The sounds [pʰ] and [p] are thus different phonemes in Hindustani but are not usually considered distinct phonemes in English. [3]
Whether a direct mapping between phonemes and characters is achieved depends on the type of orthography used. Phonological orthographies like the Indonesian orthography tend to have one-to-one mappings of phonemes to characters, whereas alphabetic orthographies like the English orthography tend to try to have direct mappings, but often end up mapping one phoneme to multiple characters.
In the examples above the characters enclosed in square brackets: "pʰ" and "p" are IPA representations of phones. The IPA unlike English and Indonesian is not a practical orthography and is used by linguists to obtain phonetic transcriptions of words in spoken languages and is therefore a strongly phonetically spelled system by design.
In phonology, an allophone is one of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive and the aspirated form are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, and are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate that two phones represent two separate phonemes in the language.
Morphophonology is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes when they combine to form words.
A phoneme is any set of similar speech sounds that is perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages contain phonemes, and all spoken languages include both consonant and vowel phonemes. Phonemes are primarily studied under the branch of linguistics known as phonology.
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress.
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect or simply the way a particular individual speaks a word or language.
Phonetic transcription is the visual representation of speech sounds by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet.
A phonemic orthography is an orthography in which the graphemes correspond consistently to the language's phonemes, or more generally to the language's diaphonemes. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographies; a high degree of grapheme–phoneme correspondence can be expected in orthographies based on alphabetic writing systems, but they differ in how complete this correspondence is. English orthography, for example, is alphabetic but highly nonphonemic.
Wyandot is the Iroquoian language traditionally spoken by the people known as Wyandot or Wyandotte, descended from the Tionontati. It is considered a sister to the Wendat language, spoken by descendants of the Huron-Wendat Confederacy. It was last spoken, before its revival, by members located primarily in Oklahoma, United States, and Quebec, Canada. Linguists have traditionally considered Wyandot as a dialect or modern form of Wendat, even though the two are no longer mutually intelligible.
The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K.
The phonology of the Hungarian language is notable for its process of vowel harmony, the frequent occurrence of geminate consonants and the presence of otherwise uncommon palatal stops.
The sj-sound is a voiceless fricative phoneme found in the sound system of most dialects of Swedish. It has a variety of realisations, whose precise phonetic characterisation is a matter of debate, but which usually feature distinct labialization. The sound is represented in Swedish orthography by a number of spellings, including the digraph ⟨sj⟩ from which the common Swedish name for the sound is derived, as well as ⟨stj⟩, ⟨skj⟩, and ⟨sk⟩. The sound should not be confused with the Swedish tj-sound, often spelled ⟨tj⟩, ⟨kj⟩, or ⟨k⟩.
In linguistics, a chroneme is an abstract phonological suprasegmental feature used to signify contrastive differences in the length of speech sounds. Both consonants and vowels can be viewed as displaying this features. The noun chroneme is derived from Ancient Greek χρόνος (khrónos) 'time', and the suffixed -eme, which is analogous to the -eme in phoneme or morpheme. Two words with different meaning that are spoken exactly the same except for length of one segment are considered a minimal pair. The term was coined by the British phonetician Daniel Jones to avoid using the term phoneme to characterize a feature above the segmental level.
The phonology of Italian describes the sound system—the phonology and phonetics—of standard Italian and its geographical variants.
In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.
A pronunciation respelling for English is a notation used to convey the pronunciation of words in the English language, which do not have a phonemic orthography.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) possesses a variety of obsolete and nonstandard symbols. Throughout the history of the IPA, characters representing phonetic values have been modified or completely replaced. An example is ⟨ɷ⟩ for standard. Several symbols indicating secondary articulation have been dropped altogether, with the idea that they should be indicated with diacritics: for is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosive series has been dropped.
In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones may emerge, or they may simply be rearranged. Sound change may be an impetus for changes in the phonological structures of a language. One process of phonological change is rephonemicization, in which the distribution of phonemes changes by either addition of new phonemes or a reorganization of existing phonemes. Mergers and splits are types of rephonemicization and are discussed further below.
Hindustani is the lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan, and through its two standardized registers, Hindi and Urdu, a co-official language of India and co-official and national language of Pakistan respectively. Phonological differences between the two standards are minimal.
This article covers the phonology of modern Colognian as spoken in the city of Cologne. Varieties spoken outside of Cologne are only briefly covered where appropriate. Historic precedent versions are not considered.