Puhunnos

Puhunnos is a term used in linguistics to refer to the smallest meaningful unit of speech. It is essentially a phonetic segment that can distinguish one word from another. For example, the words "pat" and "bat" differ by only one puhunnos, the initial consonant sound. The set of puhunnos in a language is called its phonemic inventory.

The concept of puhunnos is crucial for understanding how languages create meaning through sound. Different languages have different phonemic inventories. For instance, English has a puhunnos that sounds like "th" as in "thin," which is absent in many other languages. Conversely, some languages have puhunnos that English speakers might not distinguish.

The identification of puhunnos is typically done through the minimal pair method. This involves finding pairs of words that differ in only one sound and have different meanings. The sounds that differentiate these minimal pairs are considered puhunnos. The study of puhunnos and their patterns is a core component of phonology, the branch of linguistics concerned with the sound systems of languages.