diaphoneme
Syllables: di·a·pho·nemeUK/daɪəˈfəʊniːm/US/ˈdaɪəˌfoʊnim/
diaphoneme noun: an abstract phonological unit that represents collectively the dialectal variants of a phoneme.
Noun
diaphoneme (plural diaphonemes)
- An abstract phonological unit that represents collectively the dialectal variants of a phoneme.
- The transcription /oː‖əʊ‖oʊ/ or {oː} represents the diaphoneme descended from the ancestral Early Modern English phoneme /oː/, which is preserved in Irish English as [oː] but has become [əʊ] in Received Pronunciation and as [oʊ] in General American.
- The series with the long a as a point of departure…today has the diaphoneme /o‖u/, and to be exhaustive the diaphoneme should be rendered /o‖u‖au‖oi/, for in western Yiddish there are also the articulations /šlaufn/ and /šloifn/ (sleep). From the point of departure of long e (Early Vowel E₂)...1980, S. Noble & J.A. Fishman (trr.), M. Weinrich (auth.), P. Glasser (ed.), History of the Yiddish Language II (2008), ch. vii, pp. 467f.
Forms of diaphoneme
| plural | diaphonemes |
|---|
Origin of diaphoneme
From dia- + phoneme.
Words formed from diaphoneme
- diaphonematic
- diaphonemic
- diaphonemically
- diaphonemics
Questions about diaphoneme
- What does diaphoneme mean?
- Diaphoneme means an abstract phonological unit that represents collectively the dialectal variants of a phoneme.
- What part of speech is diaphoneme?
- Diaphoneme is a noun.
- How do you pronounce diaphoneme?
- Diaphoneme is pronounced /ˈdaɪəˌfoʊnim/ (US).
- What is the plural of diaphoneme?
- The plural of diaphoneme is diaphonemes.
Words near diaphoneme in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: diaphoneme (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “diaphoneme.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/diaphoneme. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.