What is the difference between phones and phonemes, and how are they related?

Question

The concepts of phones and phonemes is often difficult for students to make, particularly because they are described the same way and are related because they are both language sounds.

Answer 1

Phones are the basic units of phonetics, while phonemes are the basic units of phonology. Phones are shown in brackets, such as [ m ] and [ o ], while phonemes are shown between forward slashes, such as / m / and

/ o / Phones are the actual sounds that people make when they speak their language, while phonemes are the mental representations of sounds that people have stored in their minds. Phonemes are sounds that can distinguish one word from another. Evidence that a sound is a phoneme comes from the fact that one sound can be substituted for another to make a new word. For example, if we replace the "n" in "pane" with an "l" we get the word "pale". This shows that the sounds / n / and / l / are phonemes of English since they can be used to distinguish words. A lot of the time, the phonemes of a word and the phones that actually pronounced are the same, but sometimes phonological rules can change phonemes into different phones so that the ideal way speakers think of a word's pronunciation is not how they actually pronounce it. Many phonological rules occur because sounds that come before or after another sound can affect its pronunciation. Phonological rules can also be affected by syllable stress and the exact positioning of a sound in a word, such as whether it comes at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. An example is the words "latter" and "ladder". If asked, speakers of English would probably say that "latter" has a "t" sound in the middle, while "ladder" has a "d" sound. However, in American English these two words become homophones (words that are pronounced exactly the same even though their spellings are different) because both the / t / phoneme in "latter" and the / d / phoneme in "ladder" become what is called a "flap d", symbolized as [ ɾ ] because of a phonological rule. To demonstrate this, have someone say these to words for you in regular, casual speech and listen to see if you can tell the difference. The sounds / t / and / d / are phonemes of English because they can be used to distinguish words, such as "bend" and "bent". The [ ɾ ] is not a phoneme of English because it cannot be used to distinguish words, but it is a phone of English because it is used by speakers to pronounce some words.