Phonetics is a really big subject and people often ask me questions that I don’t know the answer to. Today we are going to look at one of those questions, this time about Phonetic Definitions and the meaning of some terms that are used in phonetics.
Lilian says:
Well a lot of people think I am an Expert in phonetics but the truth is I’m not. I just know a little bit that I think is helpful for people learning English as a foreign language. And this question goes a little beyond my knowledge. I don’t think people really need to worry about Phonetic Definitions, if their goal is to speak better English.
Phonetic Definitions: phone, phoneme, allophone
But as I understand it a ‘phone’ is very specific sound and there are hundreds. ‘Phonemes’ are the symbols that you see on the phonetic chart. And ‘allophones’ are the groups of phones that the actual phonemes represent.
So there may be multiple ‘phones’ for the same ‘phoneme’. For example, the different pronunciations of the letter “t” in the words tub, stub, but, butter, and button, they are all very similar but slightly different so they are allophones of the phoneme /t/.
I hope that clears things up, like I said I don’t think English learners need to worry too much about this unless you are studying phonetics specifically in which case you are looking at the wrong web page.
So everyone, do you find phonetics helpful, does it over complicate things for you? Let me know in the comments.
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