Allophone

/ˈaləfˌəʊn/

/ˈæɫəˌfoʊn/

Allophone

a variant pronunciation of a phoneme, which can occur due to phonetic differences in specific contexts or environments within a language

Examples

1. We can make observations like this about sounds in a language, to determine whether we're dealing with a phoneme with two allophones, like a color-changing rabbit, or two different phonemes, like two differently colored rabbits.

2. So, I would go on and on and on about the theory behind the sounds and allophones and phonemes, and use all these fancy words.

3. That’s how we prove that these two sounds are allophones of one phoneme.

4. To think about how two different sounds can be allophones of the same phoneme, let's compare them to a rabbit.