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A phonemic orthography is an orthography (system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond consistently to the language's phonemes (the smallest units of speech that can differentiate words), or more generally to the language's diaphonemes.[ citation needed ]
For a systemic analyis of the phoneme/grapheme correspondence Petr Sgall, disinguishes two conditions, both of which are to be satisfied for a phonemic orthography: [1]
- (a) in any context the given grapheme is pronounced as the same phoneme ("uniqueness of pronunciation")
- (b) in any context the given phoneme is written with the same grapheme ("uniqueness of spelling")