äännän

Äänne is a term used in linguistics to refer to the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish meaning. It is a phonetic concept, meaning it relates to the physical sounds produced by the vocal tract. Unlike phonemes, which are abstract representations of sounds in the mind of a speaker, äänne refers to the actual, concrete pronunciation of a sound in speech.

For instance, the English word "pin" and "bin" are distinguished by the initial sounds /p/ and /b/. While these are considered phonemes, the specific way a speaker articulates /p/ might vary slightly depending on its position in a word or the surrounding sounds. These variations are considered äänne. One might be an aspirated "p" at the beginning of a word, while another might be an unaspirated "p" after an "s".

The study of äänne falls under the domain of phonetics. Phonetics focuses on the production, perception, and physical properties of speech sounds. While phonology deals with how sounds function within a language system to create meaning (phonemes), phonetics examines the actual acoustic and articulatory details of these sounds as they are uttered. Therefore, äänne is a more granular unit of analysis in the study of spoken language.