Editing Phone (phonetics)

{{Short description|Distinct speech sound or gesture}}

In [[phonetics]] (a branch of [[linguistics]]), a '''phone''' is any distinct [[speech]] sound. It is any surface-level or unanalyzed sound of a language, a smallest identifiable unit occurring inside a stream of speech.{{sfnp|Loos|1997}} In spoken human language, a phone is thus any [[vowel]] or [[consonant]] sound (or [[semivowel]] sound). In [[sign language]], a phone is the equivalent as a unit of [[gesture]].

==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}}

== Connection to orthography ==
Whether a direct mapping between phonemes and characters is achieved depends on the type of orthography used. Phonological orthographies like the [[Indonesian Spelling System|Indonesian orthography]] tend to have one-to-one mappings of phonemes to characters, whereas alphabetic orthographies like the [[English orthography]] tend to try to have direct mappings, but often end up mapping one phoneme to multiple characters.

In the examples above the characters enclosed in square brackets: "pʰ" and "p" are [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] representations of phones. The IPA unlike English and Indonesian is not a practical orthography and is used by linguists to obtain [[Phonetic transcription|phonetic transcriptions]] of words in spoken languages and is therefore a strongly phonetically spelled system by design.

== See also ==
{{Wiktionary pipe|phone#Etymology 2|phone}}
* [[Emic unit]]
* [[Index of phonetics articles]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Bibliography==
* {{cite book
|last=Barry
|first=W. J.
|chapter=Phoneme
|year=2006
|editor-last=Brown
|editor-first=Keith
|title=Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics
|edition=2nd
|pages=345–350
|publisher=Elsevier
|isbn=978-0-08-044854-1
|doi=10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00009-2
}}
* {{cite book| last=Crystal|first=David| year=1971| title=Linguistics| location=Baltimore| publisher=Penguin}}
* {{cite web| title=What is a phone?| url=http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryOflinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhone.htm| work=LinguaLinks: Glossary of linguistic terms| publisher=SIL International| access-date=16 December 2013| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171015105109/http://www.glossary.sil.org/term/phone| archive-date=15 October 2017| url-status=dead| editor-first=Eugene E.| editor-last=Loos| year=1997}}
* {{cite web| title=Urdu: Structure of Language| url=http://www.ciil-lisindia.net/Urdu/urdu_struct.html| website=Language Information Service (LIS) – India|publisher=Central Institute of Indian Languages |access-date=1 February 2016| location=Mysore| language=en|year=2008 | ref = {{harvid|CIIL|2008}}}}

[[Category:Phonetics]]
[[Category:Phonology]]