Phonemes
What is Phonemes?
Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in a language that can change the meaning of a word. For example, changing the /b/ in bat to /p/ makes it pat. Each language has its own set of phonemes, and they are key to how we hear, process, and produce speech.
The Basic Idea
Unless you’re one of the lucky few, you’ve probably found yourself belting out the lyrics to a song with complete confidence, only to later realize that you got it wrong. Maybe you sang “Hold me closer, Tony Danza,” instead of “Hold me closer, tiny dancer,” in Elton John’s Tiny Dancer, or rapped “You broccoli that you are better now” instead of “You probably think that you are better now,” in Post Malone’s Better Now.
While it might be embarrassing, the reason that we make these mistakes and mishear words and phrases—known as mondegreens—is because of phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that make up every word, usually used to distinguish one word from similar-sounding ones. For example, the phoneme /f/ in fit distinguishes it from words like hit, sit, and lit. Unfortunately, these tiny units of sound often sound similar to others. As the building blocks of language, our brains are decoding phonemes unconsciously and very quickly, this can lead us to decode a phrase incorrectly and sing the wrong words.1
Phonemes are not the same as letters. The same letter can represent more than one phoneme depending on the word in which it is used. For example, take the letter “c”: in country, it makes a /k/ sound, but in ceiling, it makes a /s/ sound. This also means that the same sound may be represented by different letters. The phoneme /f/ might be represented by an “f” like in the word fax or by “ph” in the word phase. Now you may better understand why it’s so difficult to learn new languages!2
It would then be found that the words, vowels, and phonemes are so many ways of ‘singing’ the world. The initial form of language, therefore, would have been a kind of song.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty, French philosopher who spent a portion of his career exploring language and perception3
About the Author
Emilie Rose Jones
Emilie currently works in Marketing & Communications for a non-profit organization based in Toronto, Ontario. She completed her Masters of English Literature at UBC in 2021, where she focused on Indigenous and Canadian Literature. Emilie has a passion for writing and behavioural psychology and is always looking for opportunities to make knowledge more accessible.
