 Phone used to pronounce a single phoneme |
In phonology, an allophone (/ˈæləˌfoʊn/ ; from Ancient Greek ἄλλος (állos) 'other' and φωνή (phōnḗ) '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 , [] (as in [doˈloɾ]) and [] (as in [ˈnaða]) are allophones for the phoneme /d/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English (as in the difference between and ).