Phonemics

Phonemics, or Why Phonetic is so hard…

You do not hear physical sound directly.

If you did, phonetics would be easy.

Instead, you perceive all speech sounds through the sound system of your native language(s) and the languages you have studied.

What does

that mean?

You perceive speech sounds through structure.

When you deal with sound outside of the structure you are used to, it can become confusing and difficult to even perceive a sound.

When you hear human speech sounds, these sounds automatically “trigger” perceptual units in your brain/mind.

These units are abstractions and are used to organize and structure the “sounds” of your native language.

The phoneme is the basic unit of organization of sounds in language.

The phoneme is an abstract, structural and perceptual unit of speech.

To put another way, when

 someone utters a physical 

speech sound to you, that 

speech sound triggers a 

phoneme in your mind – you 

do not “hear” the phonetic 

distinctions directly. 

Instead, the sound triggers a perceptual unit and you

 perceive the sound as that unit.

When native speakers (without formal linguistics 

training) say they “hear no difference” between two 

sounds, it is probably because in their language 

those two sounds trigger the same perceptual unit.

Those two sounds belong to the same phoneme.

You will generally not “hear” a difference between two sounds that belong to the same phoneme.

You will generally “hear” a difference between two sounds who belong to different phonemes.

Phonemes are used to build words and contrast “sound unit” from “sound unit.”

Classic English Phoneme Example

Key Vocabulary in Phonemics

lPhoneme – abstract structural and perceptual unit /     /

lPhone – phonetic speech sound, unanalyzed according to 

phonemic status

  [ ]

lAllophone – after analyzing data, the phonetic speech 

sound that belongs to, and thus triggers, a phoneme

 [  ]  under /  /

Writing phonemes and the allophones that realize them:

/ / phoneme (choose one allophone as symbol)

  [ ] Allophone 1

  [  ] Allophone 2    etc.

Generally, when there is more than one allophone, each will occur in its own environment – if that  is the case, list environment, too

Analyzing Data to Determine Phonemes