English > speech sound: 1 sense > noun 1, communication| Meaning | (phonetics) an individual sound unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language. |
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| Synonyms | phone, sound |
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| Category | phonetics | The branch of acoustics concerned with speech processes including its production and perception and acoustic analysis |
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| Part of | utterance, vocalization | The use of uttered sounds for auditory communication |
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| Narrower | consonant | A speech sound that is not a vowel |
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| orinasal phone, orinasal | A speech sound produced with both the oral and nasal passages open (as French nasal vowels) |
| phoneme | (linguistics) one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language |
| semivowel, glide | A vowellike sound that serves as a consonant |
| sonant, voiced sound | A speech sound accompanied by sound from the vocal cords |
| vowel, vowel sound | A speech sound made with the vocal tract open |
| Broader | language unit, linguistic unit | One of the natural units into which linguistic messages can be analyzed |
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| Spanish | fonema, fono, sonido |
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| Catalan | fonema, so |
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