Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that distinguish one word from another in a language. There are 44 phonemes in English represented by letters alone or letter combinations. Phonemes can be segmented from words by breaking words into their individual sound units. The English language has a complex phonetic code where one phoneme can be represented by 1 to 4 letters. Minimal pairs are word pairs that differ by one phoneme, like "fan" and "van", helping learners distinguish similar sounds.

1. Phonemes
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Ata ul ghafer 2141

2. What is Phonemes
 A phoneme is a unit of sound in speech. A phoneme doesn't have any inherent
meaning by itself, but when you put phonemes together, they can make words.
Think of when adults try to get a baby to say his or her first word. They often coax
him or her to sound out the beginning of a word by repeating that sound, or
phoneme, over and over by saying something like, 'M, m, m' for 'Mommy.' The 'm'
sound, often written as /m/,(mah)sound is an example of a phoneme.

3.  A phoneme is a smallest unit of sound within a spoken word.
 The world comes from Greek word phonema which means sound.
 Letters are a code of symbols that spell phonemes in words.
 when we read we translate the symbols into sounds and thus we decode word.

4.  There are 44 phonemes in English (in the standard British model),
each one representing a different sound a person can make. Since
there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, sometimes letter
combinations need to be used to make a phoneme. A letter can also
represent different phonemes. (From A to Z)

5. Phoneme Segmentation
 In Studying speech we divide this stream into small pieces that we call Segments.
 You can segment, or break apart, any word to recognize the sounds or phonemes
in that word. For example, if you say the word ‘fun,' you will hear that there are
three sound units, or phonemes, in that word: /f/ /u/ /n/
 The English phonic code is complex.Unlike simple transparent writing system in
which phonemes are spelled consistently by one letter, in English phonemes can be
spelled by 1-4 letters. This is the basic concept.

6. Phonemes spelled by 1-4 letters
 Examples
 Sit = /s/ /i/ / /
 Mail = /m/ /ai/ / l/
 Catch= /c/ /a/ /tch/
 Through= /th// r/ /ough/

7.  if we put one of those twenty vowels in the place of one of the Others, we can
change the meaning of a word. For example, if we Substitute æ for e in the word
“bed’ we get a different word: “bad’.
 The case of two slightly different ways of pronouncing what we regard As “the
same sound”, we usually find that, if we substitute one for the Other, a change in
the meaning of a word does not result. For example, If we substitute a more open
vowel (cardinal vowel no. 4 [a]) for the a In the word ‘bad’, the word is still heard
as “bad’.

8.  In the alphabet we have five letters That are called vowels:
 ‘a’, ‘e, I,’0’, ‘u’.
 If we choose the right context We can show how substituting one letter for
another will change Meaning. Thus with a letter ‘p before and a letter ‘t’ after
the vowel Letter, we get the five words spelt ‘pat’, ‘pet’, ‘pit, ‘pot, ‘put’, each
of Which has a different meaning.
 We can do the same with sounds. If we Look at the short vowels we can see
how Substituting one for another in between the plosives p and t gives us six
Different words as follows (given in spelling on the left)
 Pit /Pit/
 Pat / paet/

9. Minimal Pair
 A minimal pair is a pair of words that vary by only a single sound,
usually meaning sounds that may confuse English learners, like the
/f/ and /v/ in fan and van, or the /e/ and /ɪ/ in desk and disk.
 Free variation.
One can be substituted for the other without changing the meaning;
the Two realisations are said to be in free variation.
 Allophones
The variant of the same phoneme is called allophones.
Example: k in the word kite it is KH. And sky it is k

10. Thank you