Phone
From FrathWiki
Jump to navigationJump to search
A Phone is the smallest identifiable unit that can be transcribed using an IPA symbol
in phonetics and linguistics, it a distinct sound or gesture, regardless of whether it is critical to the meaning of the word of which it is a part.
To contrast, a phoneme is a vocal sound in a given language that, if swapped with another phoneme, would change the meaning of a given word.
Phones are unspecific to any language and are absolute while phonemes can only be discussed in terms of a specific language.