allophone

American  

[al-uh-fohn] / ˈæl əˌfoʊn /

noun

Phonetics.

1. any of the members of a class of speech sounds that, taken together, are commonly felt to be a phoneme, as the t- sounds of toe, stow, tree, hatpin, catcall, cats, catnip, button, metal, city; a speech sound constituting one of the phonetic manifestations or variants of a particular phoneme.

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allophone British  

/ ˌæləˈfɒnɪk, ˈæləˌfəʊn /

noun

1. any of several speech sounds that are regarded as contextual or environmental variants of the same phoneme. In English the aspirated initial (p) in pot and the unaspirated (p) in spot are allophones of the phoneme /p/

2. a Canadian whose native language is neither French nor English

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Other Word Forms

• allophonic adjective
• allophonically adverb

Etymology

Origin of allophone

First recorded in 1930–35; allo- + phone ²

Compare meaning

How does allophone compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• phoneme vs. allophone

Example Sentences

As a result, allophone children often face learning and communication difficulties in kindergarten, which can negatively impact their educational journey.

From Science Daily

At the time of the survey, 6.1% of kindergarten children in Quebec came from allophone families, amounting to 4,360 children.

From Science Daily

This is the first study to specifically examine the impact of preschool services on the readiness of allophone children entering kindergarten.

From Science Daily