Comparison

A phone is …

• One of many possible sounds in the languages of the world.
• The smallest identifiable unit found in a stream of speech.
• Pronounced in a defined way.
• Represented between brackets by convention.

Example: [b], [j], [o]

A phoneme is …

• A contrastive unit in the sound system of a particular language.
• A minimal unit that serves to distinguish between meanings of words.
• Pronounced in one or more ways, depending on the number of allophones.
• Represented between slashes by convention.

Example: /b/, /j/, /o/