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allophone

The definition of an allophone is an alternative sound for a letter or group of letters in a word.

(noun)

An example of an allophone is the short sound of the "a" in mat and the long sound of the "a" in mad.

See allophone in Webster's New World College Dictionary

noun

Linguis. any of the variant forms of a phoneme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds: the relatively short (a) of mat and the relatively long (a) of mad are allophones

Origin: allo- + phone

Related Forms:

allophonic adjective

See allophone in American Heritage Dictionary 4

noun

Linguistics A predictable phonetic variant of a phoneme. For example, the aspirated t of top, the unaspirated t of stop, and the tt (pronounced as a flap) of batter are allophones of the English phoneme /t/.
or Allophone Canadian A person whose native language is other than French or English.

Origin:

Origin: allo-

Origin: + phone(me)

Related Forms: