What is the difference between phonemes and allophones?

Let's start with the concept of a phoneme. So, a phoneme is “the smallest contrastive
phonological unit which can produce a difference of meaning”. A mental, abstract
representation of speech sound (“this is a mental category” - it is only a psychological
reality). And an allophone is the phonetic variation, different pronunciation, of the same
phoneme.

So each phoneme “/…/” can be realized as one or more different allophones “[...]”,
depending on the environment in which that sound appears

– /t/ –
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Let's just take a couple. So we have this category [t], [tʰ] of /t/, the phoneme /t/.
When it is actually spoken, or pronounced as an allophone, it could maybe take on one of
these allophones rather than the other. They appear in very predictable environments. That's
the thing about these allphones; you'll see that they are predictable, where they're going to
happen.

They are in “complementary distribution” (is the distribution or pattern of phones in their
pronetics environments, the two different phones never appear in the same context or
phonetic environment. When phones are in complementary distribution a person can predict
where these sounds will be.), so it's predictable when they're going to happen.

So let's take a word like “stop”, and let's take a word like “top”. We might think that both of
those words have the same /t/ in them, but they don't, they're actually two different sounds.

So, for instance, if we take the first one [t], what we call an “unaspirated stop”, that happens
in words like, well, “stop” (/stap/). Whereas in the word “top”(/tʰap/), we're actually producing
that with an aspirated “t” [tʰ] sound.

What's the difference between “aspirated” and “unaspirated”?

“Aspirated” sounds produce a little puff of air after the sound, whereas “Unaspirated” sounds
do not.

But the crucial thing about these allophones is that if you switch those sounds around in that
environment, it does not result in a change of meaning. We're still talking about the same
word.

Phonemes, however, are in what's called “contrastive distribution”, which means that they
can produce a change in meaning.

So we probably ask: Well, are these allophones of the same phoneme or are they two
different phonemes? There's actually one test we can use, the “minimal pairs test”.
A “minimal pair” in a language are two forms, two words, that are the exact same, except for
one sound.

So let's take, again, the environment [_ap] and then at the beginning, we could have [t] like
“top”, but instead of that, let's say we put the sound [p], well then have “pop”

So this is basically telling you that because you switch the sounds [p] and [t] and it results in
a change of meaning (“top” vs. ”pop”), those are two different words with two different
meanings. Therefore, [p] and [t] must be two different phonemes in English (more
specifically, they are two allophones of two different phonemes in English).

So, again, that's why with something like “pop” and “top”, it tells us; change of word, change
of meaning, they must be two different phonemes. But here with an aspirated “t” ([tʰ]) or an
unaspirated “t” ([t]), it doesn't change the meaning; we're still talking about “top”

So, that’s the difference between phonemes and allophones.

Phonemes are contrastive; they can change meaning when you switch one sound with
another sound. If you do that and it results in two different words with two different meanings,
you're talking about two different phonemes.

And if, like in the last example, you switch the sound around but it doesn't result in a change
of meaning, maybe just a different pronunciation, that tells you that those sounds in question
are allophones of the same phoneme.