What are phonemes?

Answer 1

Quite simply, phonemes are speech sounds. They are not segments of words like syllables are.

An example of a phoneme is the /t/ sound in the words tip, stand, water, and cat. Although they appear to be the same sound, they are not, because in each word they are pronounced slightly differently.

In the word eight there are just two phonemes - eigh / t

In the word word there are three phonemes - w / or / d but this is where the differentiation between accents may come in to play. In some accents of the US, the r would be pronounced quite strongly, and be considered its own phoneme, whilst in England and Australia, the r is a very weak sound, and becomes part of the or phoneme.

Phonemes do not have any intrinsic meaning of their own but, depending on their grammatical context, they have the power to change the meaning of a word.

The English language has 44 phonemes out of which 20 are vowels and 24 consonants.

Answer 2

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that can change the meaning of a word. They are distinct sounds that are used to differentiate between words in a language. For example, in English, the sounds "p" and "b" are phonemes because they can create different words like "pat" and "bat."