Many Greek and Latin terms are used in Russian. "Phoneme" comes from the Greek word used in the formation of many two-root words used in science, technology, and just in everyday life. The word is "background" and it means "sound" or "voice". We remember: tape recorder (magnetic recording of sound), voice recorder (from the Greek "background" and Latin dicto, which means "to dictate"). Finally, the myelophon, famous for the works of Kir Bulychev, is a fictional device for reading thoughts. That is, "background" in translation from Greek is sound (well, or voice; each word, depending on the context, can mean different, albeit similar concepts). With this everything is clear, but now let's take a closer look at how the sound differs from the phoneme. And in general - what is a phoneme?
What does the word "sound" mean?
In the physical sense, sound is a phenomenon that is elastic mechanical vibrations that propagate in different media: gaseous (atmosphere, gas), liquid (water or melt of any substance) or solid. A clarification should be made here. Usually, in everyday life, we understand by this word those vibrations that are perceived by the sense organs of humans or animals.
The human ear picks up vibrations with a frequency of about 16 to 20,000 Hertz. These figures are not absolute; individual sensitivity may differ slightly. A sound with a frequency less than the lower limit is usually called infrasound, more than the upper one - ultrasound. The section of physics - acoustics is engaged in the study of sounds.
Phoneme
The difference between sound and phoneme is that the second term is used not in physics and not in everyday life, but in linguistics and philology. That is, in the humanities related to language. This term is relatively new, it was first recorded in the second half of the 19th century in Kazan. Its inventors are linguistic scientists, ethnic Poles, subjects of the Russian Empire who worked in this Volga city - Nikolai Vyacheslavovich Krushevsky and Ivan Alexandrovich Baudouin de Courtenay, who has French roots. Both of them taught at Kazan University. Krushevsky died at the age of 35, and subsequently Baudouin de Courtenay repeatedly pointed out that it was his friend who was the “inventor” of the term “phoneme”. Since then and to this day, the phoneme is the minimum semantic unit of the language.
Comparison
To be extremely brief, the difference between sound and phoneme can be formulated as follows. Sound is any vibration in an elastic medium, perceived by the sense organs (of humans or animals), and the phoneme is the "primary brick" from which the words that make up our vocabulary are built. That is, the minimum sound unit of a language, a narrow, concrete concept, something like a particular case of sound. One letter does not necessarily equal one phoneme. Some vowels in Russian (I, Yu, E, E) consist of two phonemes. In other languages, as, for example, in English, one phoneme is designated by two or even three letters (in German, the sound [Ш] is written like this: SCH).
In linguistics, there is a section specializing in the study of phonemes. It's called phonology. More precisely, this section studies the general sound structure of the language and the functioning of sound in the linguistic system. And the phoneme is one of the subjects of the study of phonology.
Table
So let's summarize what is the difference between sound and phoneme. A compact table shows the differences between these terms.
| Sound | Phoneme | |
| The meaning of the term | Physical phenomenon: propagation of vibrations in an elastic medium (solid, liquid, gaseous). More often the word is understood in a narrow sense - as vibrations perceived by the organs of hearing of humans or animals | The minimum unit of language. It has no independent semantic meaning |
| Field of use | There is a section of acoustics in physics. It is she who is engaged in the study of sounds. In everyday life, it is used to designate vibrations heard by the human ear | Linguistics, in particular, its section - phonology |
