 "in human language, a phoneme (from the greek: φώνημα, phōnēma, "a sound uttered") is the smallest posited structural unit that distinguishes meaning, though they carry no semantic content themselves. in theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segments themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them. in effect, a phoneme is a group of slightly different sounds which are all perceived to have the same function by speakers of the language in question. An example of a phoneme is the /k/ sound in the words kit and krill." (wikipedia) |