äänemia
äänemia is a term used in linguistics to describe the smallest units of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. These are not necessarily the same as letters, as a single letter can represent multiple sounds, or multiple letters can represent a single sound. For example, in English, the 'p' sound in 'pin' and the 'b' sound in 'bin' are phonemes that differentiate these two words. If these sounds were indistinguishable, 'pin' and 'bin' would be considered the same word.
The phonemic inventory of a language refers to the complete set of phonemes used in that language.
Identifying phonemes is a crucial step in phonological analysis. Linguists often use minimal pairs, which are