What are Phonemes?

What are Phonemes? Phonemes are the different sounds within a language. Although there are slight differences in how individuals articulate sounds, we can still describe reasonably accurately how each sound is produced.

What are Phonemes? A phoneme is the minimal speech unit that can distinguish two different words in a language.

A phoneme is a meaningful symbol in a language, but it is meaningful in a special sense. It is not that the phoneme itself has a meaning like a word does, but rather that the phoneme makes a meaningful difference in comparing two words. Phonemes are symbols written inside of slanted lines or slashes, /..../

Phonemes are mental abstractions; they are never pronounced because when we try to produce them, we are forced to produce phones.