User:Megaman en m/Allophone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Allophone is a term used in phonology (//; from the Greek ἄλλος, állos, "other" and φωνή, phōnē, "voice, sound"). It is one of the possible spoken sounds, or phones, or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a specific language.[1] For example, [t] (as in Tom [tɑm]) and [ɾ] (as in Letter [ˈɫɛɾɚ]) are allophones for the phoneme /t/ in English. These two sounds are said to be different phonemes in Spanish. On the other hand [d] (as in dolor [do̞ˈlo̞r]) and [ð] (as in nada [ˈnaða]) are allophones for the phoneme /d/ in Spanish, but in English these two sounds are said to be different phonemes.
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Phoneme-allophone-determination-chart.svg/640px-Phoneme-allophone-determination-chart.svg.png)
The allophone in a word is often predictable from the sounds around it. These types of allophones are called positional variants. Some allophones can also happen in free variation. This means that multiple allophones can be used in the same position without changing the meaning of the word. When a sound is replaced by another allophone of the same phoneme, the meaning of the word will not change, but the word will sound strange to a native speaker.
Native speakers of a language think that one phoneme in their language is only one sound. They are surprised when they learn that there are different versions of single phonemes.[2][3]