What is a phoneme?

A “phoneme” is the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish words from one another. Phonemes don’t carry meaning by themselves but combine to form words.

Changing a single phoneme can result in a different word with a different meaning. For example, in the words “pat” and “bat,” /p/ and /b/ are phonemes.

Phonemes are important in transcription and transliteration. They are also relevant when learning the pronunciation of a new language.

Try QuillBot’s free Translator to translate words into a language you’re learning.