phonéma

Phoneme is a fundamental concept in linguistics, referring to the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. It is an abstract mental representation of a sound, rather than the physical sound itself, which can vary due to context or individual speaker. For example, the English words "pat" and "bat" differ by only one phoneme, the initial consonant sound. Linguists use slashes to denote phonemes, such as /p/ and /b/. The set of phonemes present in a particular language is called its phonemic inventory. The study of phonemes and their patterns is known as phonology. Distinguishing phonemes from phones is important; phones are the actual speech sounds produced, while phonemes are the functional units that create meaning differences. Minimal pairs, like "pin" and "bin," are often used to identify the phonemes of a language. Understanding phonemes is crucial for analyzing language structure, learning new languages, and developing speech technologies.