What is a phoneme?

What is a phoneme?

• A. A syllable that rhymes with another.
• B. A letter in the alphabet.
• C. The stress pattern of a sentence.
• D. The smallest unit of sound in speech that can change meaning.

Answer: (D)

The smallest unit of sound in speech that can change meaning. Think of how swapping one sound for another creates a different word, like /p/ in pat versus /b/ in bat. That contrastive sound is what a phoneme is—the building blocks that let us tell words apart. A syllable is a bigger piece of a word, a beat that can contain multiple sounds, so it isn’t the unit that changes meaning by itself. A letter in the alphabet is a written symbol, not a sound; sometimes one sound is represented by different letters and one letter can stand for different sounds. The stress pattern or intonation shapes emphasis and mood but doesn’t define the meaning of a word in the same way that replacing one phoneme does.

The smallest unit of sound in speech that can change meaning. Think of how swapping one sound for another creates a different word, like /p/ in pat versus /b/ in bat. That contrastive sound is what a phoneme is—the building blocks that let us tell words apart.

A syllable is a bigger piece of a word, a beat that can contain multiple sounds, so it isn’t the unit that changes meaning by itself. A letter in the alphabet is a written symbol, not a sound; sometimes one sound is represented by different letters and one letter can stand for different sounds. The stress pattern or intonation shapes emphasis and mood but doesn’t define the meaning of a word in the same way that replacing one phoneme does.