Mi primera publicacion Margarita Mancia, Phonetics_and_Phonology_Album | Page 15

PHONOLOGY
Allophones
 The definition of an allophone is any variant forms of a phoneme as conditioned by
position or adjoining sounds: the relatively short (a) of mat and the relatively long (a)
of mad are allophones, in other words an allophone is an alternative sound for a
letter or group of letters in a word.
Examples of allophones
 A good example of a allophone variation is in the phoneme /p/ as in the word “spin” or as in
the word “pin;” the allophone in pin is aspirated (causing it to sound almost like a “phi”),
whereas the allophone in “spin” is not, and sounds like “pih.”
 Aspiration is a strong explosion of breath with an allophone, for example, the “ph” sound at
the beginning of the word “pin.”