Phone, Phoneme and Allophone

Phone:
A 'phone' is phonetic unit used to indicate the smallest perceptible discrete segment of speech sounds. For example, in the English language the different ways of pronouncing the consonant phoneme /t/ and /t'/ as in 'ten' and 'pet' respectively are all phone of the consonant phoneme /t/.

Phoneme:




A 'phoneme' is a phonological unit that includes similar sounds or phones and differentiates between two or more words. For example, in English language, the words 'pen' and 'ten' differ only in their initial sounds: 'pen' beginning with /p/, and 'ten' beginning with /t/. Therefore, /p/ and /t/ are two different phonemes.




Allophones:
It is now clear that a phoneme is an abstract unit whereas a phone is the actual realization of a phoneme. A phoneme may have several phones. The phones are called allophones of each other.