Smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word element) from another (e.g., the sound p in tap , which differentiates that word from tab and tag ).
The term is usually restricted to vowel s and consonant s, but some linguists include differences of pitch, stress , and rhythm. A phoneme may have variants, called allophones, that differ phonetically without affecting meaning. Phonemes may be recorded with special symbols, such as those of the International Phonetic Alphabet . In transcription, linguists conventionally place symbols for phonemes between slash marks: /p/.