[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/dictionaries/school/w/phoneme.html)

[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [dictionaries](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/dictionaries/) / [The school dictionary](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/dictionaries/school/) / phoneme

[← P](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/dictionaries/school/P/)

# phoneme

«phoneme» in Mova's school dictionary: **The smallest unit of sound in a language that can change…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a phoneme, phonemes)

### meaning for a pupil

(language) The smallest unit of sound in a language that can change the meaning of a word, such as /c/, /a/, /t/ in "cat"; changing /c/ to /h/ gives "hat". [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#m1)

### sense in the lessons

In phonics lessons, children split words into phonemes ("sh-i-p" has 3 phonemes) and match them to letters or groups of letters (graphemes). English has about 44 phonemes but only 26 letters. Phrases: segment phonemes, blend phonemes.

### examples

- "Ship" has three phonemes: sh-i-p. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x1)
- The word "cat" has three phonemes. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x2)
- Change one phoneme in "pin" to get "pan". [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x3)
- English has about 44 phonemes. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x4)
- The letters "igh" make one phoneme in "night". [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x5)
- Robots learn to recognise phonemes in speech. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/#x6)

### note

Countable. Pronounced "FOH-neem". A phoneme is a sound; a grapheme is the letter or letters that write it. Number of phonemes is not the same as number of letters: "night" has 5 letters but 3 phonemes (n-igh-t).

### In the corpora

- [A phoneme is one sound in a word; a grapheme is the letter or letters that write that sound.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/1-sounds-and-letters-how-phonics-starts/17/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «phoneme» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/P/phoneme/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.