Simple sounds...the phoneme

Phoneme: the most basic meaningful sound unit of a language. Every word can be broken down into a series of sound units or phonemes, and different phonemes can share similar characteristics which allow them to be grouped together, as we'll see in later posts!


Phonemes are not the same as letters. In English the letters of the alphabet are our way of representing these sounds. The group of sounds that make up a language are known as the phonetic inventory of that language. 


Phonemes are often represented by the phonetic alphabet and you've probably seen examples of these in a dictionary although you might not have been aware of it! Why not have a look at the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols for English.