Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

phoneme

/ˈfoʊ.nim/

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.44 in modern English

Syllables: pho-neme
IPA: /ˈfoʊ.nim/

14

Scrabble Score

7

Letters

2

Syllables

6

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

An indivisible unit of sound in a given language. A phoneme is an abstraction of the physical speech sounds (phones) and may encompass several different phones.

Example Sentences

"It is crucial for the phoneme structure of Finnish — traditionally /d/ has not been included in the Finnish phonotax, but it fulfils the criteria of a phoneme (Karlsson, 1983: 66-7)."

Etymology

From Ancient Greek φώνημα (phṓnēma, “sound”), from φωνέω (phōnéō, “to sound”), from φωνή (phōnḗ, “sound”). By surface analysis, phone (“speech sound”) + -eme (“unit”).

Origin

Source language: Ancient Greek

Word Breakdown

Root: *bʰeh₂-, φώνημα

Regional Pronunciation

American English: /ˈfoʊ.nim/
British English: /ˈfəʊ.niːm/

Inflected Forms

phonemes (plural)

Derived Forms

archiphoneme diaphoneme metaphoneme morphophoneme phonemal phonematic phonemehood phonemic phonemical phonemically phonemicist phonemicity

Phrases

grapheme-phoneme correspondence grapheme-to-phoneme -phone phono-

Frequently Paired Words

allophone allophonic allophonical allophonically allophonics diaphone diaphonic diaphonical

Questions

How do you pronounce phoneme?: The recorded pronunciation is /ˈfoʊ.nim/.
What does phoneme mean?: An indivisible unit of sound in a given language. A phoneme is an abstraction of the physical speech sounds (phones) and may encompass several different phones.
Where does phoneme come from?: It is traced to Ancient Greek.

How to pronounce phoneme

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “phoneme”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling (/ˈfoʊ.nim/) so you know which sounds to aim for.
Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “phoneme”.
Repeat and practice — Say “phoneme” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.