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# phoneme

noun (a phoneme, phonemes)

«phoneme» in the English dictionary: everyday — its meanings, how the lessons use it, and examples, each with its tree on Mova.

## Everyday

(language) The smallest unit of sound in a language that can change the meaning of a word, such as /c/, /a/, /t/ in "cat"; changing /c/ to /h/ gives "hat". [tree →](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#m1)

### In the lessons

In phonics lessons, children split words into phonemes ("sh-i-p" has 3 phonemes) and match them to letters or groups of letters (graphemes). English has about 44 phonemes but only 26 letters. Phrases: segment phonemes, blend phonemes.

### Examples

- "Ship" has three phonemes: sh-i-p. [tree →](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x1)
- The word "cat" has three phonemes. [tree →](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x2)
- Change one phoneme in "pin" to get "pan". [tree →](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x3)
- English has about 44 phonemes. [tree →](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x4)
- The letters "igh" make one phoneme in "night". [tree →](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x5)
- Robots learn to recognise phonemes in speech. [tree →](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x6)

### Note

Countable. Pronounced "FOH-neem". A phoneme is a sound; a grapheme is the letter or letters that write it. Number of phonemes is not the same as number of letters: "night" has 5 letters but 3 phonemes (n-igh-t).

## On Mova

- [Trees and pragmatics of «phoneme» in the school dictionary](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/): every meaning and example parsed by Mova, with its dependency tree and frames.
- [«phoneme» in the school dictionary](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/dictionaries/school/w/phoneme.html) on Mova free.