Allophone
Phone used to pronounce a single phoneme / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In phonology, an allophone (/ˈæləfoʊn/ ⓘ; from the Greek ἄλλος, állos, 'other' and φωνή, phōnē, 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language.[1] For example, in English, the voiceless plosive [t] (as in stop [ˈstɒp]) and the aspirated form [tʰ] (as in top [ˈtʰɒp]) are allophones for the phoneme /t/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, [d] (as in dolor [doˈloɾ]) and [ð] (as in nada [ˈnaða]) are allophones for the phoneme /d/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English (as in the difference between dare and there).
The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic context, with such allophones being called positional variants, but some allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme usually does not change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound non-native or even unintelligible.
Native speakers of a given language perceive one phoneme in the language as a single distinctive sound and are "both unaware of and even shocked by" the allophone variations that are used to pronounce single phonemes.[2][3]