phoneme
UK/ˈfəʊ.niːm//ˈfoʊ.nim/
phoneme noun: an indivisible unit of sound in a given language. A phoneme is an abstraction of the physical speech sounds (phones) and may encompass several different phones.
Noun
phoneme (plural phonemes)
- An indivisible unit of sound in a given language. A phoneme is an abstraction of the physical speech sounds (phones) and may encompass several different phones.
- It is crucial for the phoneme structure of Finnish — traditionally /d/ has not been included in the Finnish phonotax, but it fulfils the criteria of a phoneme (Karlsson, 1983: 66-7).1990, Jarmo Lainio, “Sweden Finnish — development or deterioration?”, in Durk Gorter, editor, Fourth International Conference on Minority Languages: Western and Eastern European papers, Multilingual...
phoneme meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Kannada
phoneme in Hindi
- indivisible unit of sound
- स्वनिम svanim
phoneme in Tamil
- indivisible unit of sound
- ஒலியன் oliyaṉ
phoneme in Marathi
- indivisible unit of sound
- ध्वनिघटक dhvanighṭak
phoneme in Kannada
- indivisible unit of sound
- ಧ್ವನಿಮಾ dhvanimā
More languagesFewer languages
- phoneme in Gujarati
- ધ્વનિઘટક dhvanighṭak
- phoneme in Tagalog
- multinig
- phoneme in Arabic
- فُونِيم fōnēm, صَوْت لُغَوِيّ ṣawt luḡawiyy
- phoneme in Malay
- fonem, warna bunyi
- phoneme in Persian
- واج vâj
- phoneme in Thai
- หน่วยเสียง nùai-sǐiang
- phoneme in Vietnamese
- âm vị
- Sindhi
- وايوم viome
Examples of phoneme in a sentence
- Spanish orthography has high phonemicity: it corresponds precisely and consistently with the sounds of the phonemes.
- GPC is short for ‘grapheme-phoneme correspondence,’ meaning the relationship between a phoneme and its graphemes.
- All the other consonant phonemes are transcribed into the homoglyphs of their IPA representations.
Forms of phoneme
| plural | phonemes |
|---|
Origin of phoneme
From Ancient Greek φώνημα (phṓnēma, “sound”), from φωνέω (phōnéō, “to sound”), from φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound”). By surface analysis, phone (“speech sound”) + -eme (“unit”).
Words formed from phoneme
Questions about phoneme
- What does phoneme mean?
- Phoneme means an indivisible unit of sound in a given language. A phoneme is an abstraction of the physical speech sounds (phones) and may encompass several different phones.
- What is phoneme in Hindi?
- Phoneme in Hindi is स्वनिम (svanim). See Phoneme meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is phoneme?
- Phoneme is a noun.
- How do you pronounce phoneme?
- Phoneme is pronounced /ˈfəʊ.niːm/ (UK).
- What is the plural of phoneme?
- The plural of phoneme is phonemes.
Words near phoneme in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: phoneme (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-phoneme.ogg.
Cite this entry: “phoneme.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/phoneme. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.