Allophone

A simplified procedure to determine whether two sounds represent the same or different phonemes. The cases on the extreme left and the extreme right are those in which the sounds are allophones.

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

In phonology, an allophone (/ˈæləfoʊn/ ^ⓘ; from the Greek ἄλλος, állos, 'other' and φωνή, phōnē, 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language.^[1] For example, in English, the voiceless plosive [t] (as in stop [ˈstɒp]) and the aspirated form [tʰ] (as in top [ˈtʰɒp]) are allophones for the phoneme /t/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, [d] (as in dolor [doˈloɾ]) and [ð] (as in nada [ˈnaða]) are allophones for the phoneme /d/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English (as in the difference between dare and there).

The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic context, with such allophones being called positional variants, but some allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme usually does not change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound non-native or even unintelligible.

Native speakers of a given language perceive one phoneme in the language as a single distinctive sound and are "both unaware of and even shocked by" the allophone variations that are used to pronounce single phonemes.^[2]^[3]

^ R. Jakobson (1961), Structure of Language and Its Mathematical Aspects: Proceedings of symposia in applied mathematics, AMS Bookstore, 1980, ISBN 978-0-8218-1312-6, ...An allophone is the set of phones contained in the intersection of a maximal set of phonetically similar phones and a primary phonetically related set of phones....
^ B.D. Sharma (January 2005), Linguistics and Phonetics, Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2005, ISBN 978-81-261-2120-5, ... The ordinary native speaker is, in fact, often unaware of the allophonic variations of his phonemes ...
^ Y. Tobin (1997), Phonology as human behavior: theoretical implications and clinical applications, Duke University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-8223-1822-4, ...always found that native speakers are clearly aware of the phonemes of their language but are both unaware of and even shocked by the plethora of allophones and the minutiae needed to distinguish between them....

[ref00qacid-1] R. Jakobson (1961), Structure of Language and Its Mathematical Aspects: Proceedings of symposia in applied mathematics, AMS Bookstore, 1980, ISBN 978-0-8218-1312-6, ...An allophone is the set of phones contained in the intersection of a maximal set of phonetically similar phones and a primary phonetically related set of phones....

[ref89rahec-2] B.D. Sharma (January 2005), Linguistics and Phonetics, Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2005, ISBN 978-81-261-2120-5, ... The ordinary native speaker is, in fact, often unaware of the allophonic variations of his phonemes ...

[ref06hozep-3] Y. Tobin (1997), Phonology as human behavior: theoretical implications and clinical applications, Duke University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-8223-1822-4, ...always found that native speakers are clearly aware of the phonemes of their language but are both unaware of and even shocked by the plethora of allophones and the minutiae needed to distinguish between them....

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