Phoneme

In oral language, a phoneme is the theoretical basic unit of sound that can be used to distinguish words or morphemes; in sign language, it is a similarly basic unit of hand shape, motion, position, or facial expression. (Formerly termed chereme.) That is, changing a phoneme in a word produces either nonsense, or a different word with a different meaning.

Writing systems

Languages where a given symbol represents only one phoneme and every phoneme is represented only by one symbol are known by the layman as "phonetic languages", which might be better described as "phonemically written". English is often given as an example of an "unphonetic" language as its spelling system is highly erratic. There are numerous cases in which it is not possible to predict the pronunciation from the spelling or vice versa. {{ll|Welsh}} is also among the least predictable of the languages using the Latin alphabet. In {{ll|French}}, rules to predict pronunciation from spelling are quite simple and with few exceptions, but guessing spelling from pronunciation is quite difficult, especially because of the many silent letters. {{ll|Italian}}, {{ll|Spanish}} and especially {{ll|Finnish}} have a very close letter-to-phoneme correspondence. {{ll|Karelian}} has a perfectly phonemic spelling system, as it has no standard language, but it has a complete spelling system.

Related Topics:
Phoneme - Standard language

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

However, the split between phonemically-written and non-phonemically-written languages is usually exaggerated. All languages are in fact written with conventional signs that represent meaning and are inspired to some degree by pronunciation. This is true at both ends of the scale: Chinese characters are first and foremost symbols of meaning, but they do also have some minimal phonetic information. At the other extreme, there are some few orthographies which are perfect phonemic representations of the standard accent, but since they make no effort to represent the variation in pronunciation within a language, they too are partially conventional.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

All other languages fall somewhere between these extremes. Although English is often given as an example of an "unphonetic" language, in reality its system is nowhere near as close to being a purely conventional system as Chinese writing is. English spelling conveys etymological information, but also vast amounts of phonetic information. Spanish is often given as an example of a "phonetic" language; however, it has numerous imperfections including silent letters. It is, at least, possible to know the correct pronunciation of any written Spanish word. Another phonetic language is Serbian, its phoneticity was established by Serbian "Webster" Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic; he followed a strict phonemical principle, which is best told by his own words: "Write as you speak and read as it is written.". Hindi, a descendant of Sanskrit, is an example of "phonetic" language written with a non-Roman Alphabet.

Related Topics:
Spanish - Silent letters - Serbian - Webster - Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic - Hindi - Sanskrit

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~