ABSTRACT
This chapter explains about Phonemes. It is necessary for the learner of a language to be aware of the difference between a phone or speech sound and a phoneme, since the phoneme usages of one language may not correspond to those of another. A phone or speech sound proper is the result of one position of the organs of speech: if another position is taken up, however slight the difference may be, what is heard is another sound or phone. It follows that the speech sounds of a language are far more numerous than is usually supposed. The sounds can be grouped into families or phonemes, each group, for certain purposes, being considered as an entity and needing only one letter to represent its various members. If the language is to be written down unambiguously, it must have a separate letter for each phoneme, otherwise words which are distinguished by pronunciation will not be distinguished in writing.
