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.

History of concept

The term "allophone" was coined by Benjamin Lee Whorf circa 1929. In doing

1.Previous
3.Next