What Is a Phoneme?
A phoneme is a unit of sound in speech. A phoneme doesn't have any inherent meaning by itself, but when you put phonemes together, they can make words. Think of when adults try to get a baby to say his or her first word. They often coax him or her to sound out the beginning of a word by repeating that sound, or phoneme, over and over by saying something like, 'M, m, m' for 'Mommy.' The 'm' sound, often written as /m/, is an example of a phoneme.