Editing Phone (phonetics) (section)

==Phones versus phonemes==
Phones are the [[segment (linguistics)|segment]]s of speech that possesses distinct physical or perceptual properties, regardless of whether the exact sound is critical to the meanings of words. Whereas a phone is a [[Abstract and concrete|concrete]] sound used across various spoken languages, a [[phoneme]] is more abstract and narrowly defined: any class of phones that the users of a particular language nevertheless ''perceive'' as a single basic sound, a single unit, and that distinguishes words from other words. If a phoneme is swapped with another phoneme inside a word, it can change the meaning of that word, potentially changing that word into another word (or into nonsense). 

For instance, the {{IPA|[k]}} phone in the English word ''hick'', a word transcribed as {{IPA|[hɪk]}} in the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]] (IPA), distinguishes it from other words, like ''hit'', ''hip,'' ''hiss'', ''hitch'', etc., suggesting that {{IPA|[k]}} belongs to a phoneme in English. The English words ''kid'' and ''kit'', {{IPA|[kɪd]}} and {{IPA|[kɪt]}} in the IPA, end with two distinct sounds (phones), {{IPAblink|d|audio=y}} and {{IPAblink|t|audio=y}}, and swapping one for the other makes the one word sound like the other. Thus, in the English language, these particular phones are classifiable under two separate phonemes, transcribed as {{IPA|/d/}} versus {{IPA|/t/}} (slashes indicate phonemes in the IPA, while square brackets indicate phones). However, the difference between the  {{IPAblink|ɕ|audio=y}} sound in some dialects' pronunciation of ''sheet'' and the {{IPAblink|ʃ|audio=y}} in ''shack'' ({{IPA|[ɕit]}} versus {{IPA|[ʃæk]}} in the IPA) never affects the meaning or identity of a word in English. Even if those particular phones are interchanged, those two words would still likely be recognized as ''sheet'' and ''shack'' by native English speakers. Therefore, the phones {{IPA|[ɕ]}} and {{IPA|[ʃ]}} do not belong to two separate phonemes in English; rather, they could be classified as two possible phonetic variations (called ''[[allophone]]s'') of the same phoneme. In contrast, languages other than English, such as some Slavic languages like Polish or Russian, may indeed perceive {{IPA|[ɕ]}} and {{IPA|[ʃ]}} as separate phonemes.

As another example, swapping the sounds {{IPA|[pʰ]}} and {{IPA|[p]}} in the English word ''spin'' does not change its meaning. However, in [[Hindustani language|Hindustani]] (Hindi and Urdu), swapping these phones can change one word into another: for instance, {{IPA|[pʰal]}} ({{lang|hi|फल}}/{{lang|ur|پھل}}) means 'fruit', and {{IPA|[pal]}} ({{lang|hi|पल}}/{{lang|ur|پل}}) means 'moment'.{{sfnp|CIIL|2008}} The sounds {{IPA|[pʰ]}} and {{IPA|[p]}} are thus different phonemes in Hindustani but are not usually considered distinct phonemes in English.{{sfnp|Barry|2006}}