Question

What is the difference between phonemes transcription and allophones?

Answer 1

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What is the difference between a phoneme and an allophone?

What is the difference between a phoneme and an allophone?

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ROBERTWILLIAM | CERTIFIED EDUCATOR

A phoneme is a unit of sound in a language that cannot be analysed into smaller linear units and that can distinguish one word from another.

Phonemes are often presented surrounded by // in transcription (e.g. /p/ and /b/ in English pat, bat).

So /p/ and /b/ are two phonemes because they can distinguish between the words "pat" and "bat". /c/ is another, because it distinguishes the word "cat" from "pat" and "bat".

Allophones are any of the variants making up a single phoneme.

So, for example, you might pronounce the letter "T" differently in the two words "stand" and "tip". A common test to determine whether two phones are allophones or separate phonemes relies on finding minimal pairs: words that differ by only the phones in question. For example, the words tipand dip illustrate that [t] and [d] are separate phonemes, /t/ and /d/, in English.

Answer 2

The goal of a phonemic transcription is to record the 'phonemes as mental categories' that a speaker uses, rather than the actual spoken variants of those phonemes that are produced in the context of a particular word. ... The spoken variants of each phoneme are known as its allophones .