PHONES AND ALLOPHONES
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While the phoneme is the
abstract unit or sound-type (“in
the mind”), there are many
different versions of that
sound-type regularly produced
in actual speech (“in the
mouth”). We can describe those
different versions as phones.
When we have a set of phones, all of
which are versions of one phoneme, we
add the prefix “allo-” (= one of a
closely related set) and refer to them
as allophones of that phoneme.