 Phoneme (Gr.

phone “sound, voice”) is the smallest contrastive unit of

language that may change the meaning of a morpheme and, as a pursuant, a
word.
Put it simply, phoneme is a contrasting phonological unit. Let us consider several
examples:
1) pig – big /p/* – /b/
2) pen – pan /e/ – /æ/
3) sink – think /s/ – /θ/

As can be seen from the examples above, the distinction between /p/ – /b/, /e/ – /æ/,
and /s/ – /θ/ creates new words in English, which means that English has such
phonemes as /p/, /b/, /e/, /æ/, /s/, /θ/ (among other English phonemes). When linguists
construct phonological system of a language (let’s say the language of a tribe), they try
to find pairs of words in which the distinction is as small as in the words above. If such a
pair is found, then it means that this language has such phonemes. Let us consider one
more example, in Russian this time:
4) люк [luk] “hatch” – лук [ɫuk] “onion” /l/ – /ɫ/.
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In this pair the only difference between two words is /l/ – /ɫ/, that is, soft /l/ vs hard /ɫ/. As
example 4 shows, in Russian, there are two distinctive phonemes /l/ – /ɫ/ since they
change the meaning of the word**. However, in English, there is no phoneme /ɫ/ since it
does not serve the purpose of distinguishing words or morphemes. For example,
whether we pronounce [lamp] or [ɫamp], it does not change the meaning; therefore, it is
not a phoneme in English. In contrast, in Russian, there is no pair of words which would
be distinguished based on the /e/ – /æ/ opposition (example 2 above); therefore, /æ/ is
not a phoneme in Russian.

 Sound (=phone) is a vibration or wave caused by an object.

This definition comes from acoustics and underlines physical characteristics of sounds
of speech. Sounds are instances of phonemes in real speech. Put it simply, sounds are
everything we hear with our ears. Here are some examples of sounds:
5) [k], [b], [f], [u], [d], [e], [i:]
6) the word “cat” consists of three sounds and can be transcribed as follows: [kæt]

In dictionary transcriptions, we have sounds, not phonemes. Sounds are physical

segments. Sounds, unlike phonemes, have such concrete characteristics as duration in
time and loudness. Sounds are produced by organs of speech. Sounds are quite
concrete and linguists consider them to be units of speech; while phonemes are
abstract (they are generalizations made on the basis of comparison of words) and
linguists consider them to be units of language (cf Saussurian distinction langue –
parole). Sometimes, in non-linguistic circles, the word “sound” is used to name what is,
in fact, a phoneme.
  Allophone (Gr. allos “other” and phone “sound, voice”) is a variant of a
phoneme.
Allophones are different pronunciations of words which do not change the meaning of
these words. Let us consider the following allophones:
7) [pʰ] as in “pin” and [p] as in “spin”
8) [l] as in “lean” and [ɫ] as in “fill”

Whether we (or a foreigner) pronounce [pin] or [pʰin], [spin] or [spʰin]; [li:n] or [ɫi:n], [fil]
or [fiɫ], it does not really change the meaning in English. Therefore, we are dealing not
with phonemes, but with allophones.

Allophones can be of three types (Kocherhan, 2006, p. 158):

a) individual (e.g. a foreigner or a person with a speech disorder cannot pronounce [p]
correctly);
b) territorial (e.g. when in some part of a country [p] is always pronounced as [pʰ]); and
c) positional (e.g. [l] at the end of words is usually pronounced as [ɫ]).
What is a Phone?

This is the actual sound of a word that you can hear and is represented in phonology with
square brackets surrounding it. In this part of the phonetics study, it is the part that studies
how humans make the sound of a specific word.

An example can be the word puff, so when you speak the word aloud, that sound is called the
phone. So you are speaking out the word’s mental presentation, the phoneme, which is a
symbol representing the sound and makes an actual sound.

This is represented in the symbol that is written in the square brackets, and it is written as it
sounds, like this: [pʌf]

Phoneme

Phonemes are usually written in slashes to distinguish them from phones. It is the mental
representation of a specific word. This means it is the mental image we store in our brains of
the specific word and is associated with the sound of the word.

A phoneme is defined as: “the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given
language, like in the example, puff, /pʌf/. So in the transcription system used by
the International Transcription Association, this is a broad transcription of the word puff.

Allophone

An allophone is the different ways you can say a word or basically another way to pronounce a
phoneme. This can be seen in the various ways different speakers of the English language
pronounce ‘water.’

An American English speaker will pronounce water with a “d” instead of like other English
speakers with a “t” in the center of the word. These different ways in which a word can be
pronounced are then called an Allophone.
The Difference Between Them?

So the difference between these terms then is a phoneme is the mental representation of the
sound of the word. While the phone is a sound representation of the phoneme or the word’s
sound, it is called a phonetic depiction.

The final term, the allophone, is the different ways in which the phoneme can be represented
or the different ways a word is pronounced.

Suprasegmental, also called prosodic feature, in phonetics, a speech feature such

as stress, tone, or word juncture that accompanies or is added over consonants and
vowels; these features are not limited to single sounds but often extend over syllables,
words, or phrases. In Spanish the stress accent is often used to distinguish between
otherwise identical words: término means “term,” termíno means “I terminate,”
and terminó means “he terminated.” In Mandarin Chinese, tone is a distinctive
suprasegmental: shih pronounced on a high, level note means “to lose”; on a slight rising
note means “ten”; on a falling note means “city, market”; and on a falling–rising note
means “history.” English “beer dripped” and “beard ripped” are distinguished by word
juncture.

The above examples demonstrate functional suprasegmentals. Nonfunctional

suprasegmentals that do not change the meaning of words or phrases also exist; stress
in French is an example. Suprasegmentals are so called in contrast to consonants and
vowels, which are treated as serially ordered segments of the spoken utterance.