What is "allophone"

allophone \allophone\ n. any one of two or more speech sounds that considered variants of the same phoneme. For example, the p sounds of pin and spin are allophones of p; and the t sounds of toe stop and catnip are allophones of t.

n. 1 (context phonetics English) Any of two or more alternative pronunciations for a phoneme. 2 (context Canada English) A person whose mother tongue is neither English nor French.

n. (linguistics) any of various acoustically different forms of the same phoneme

In phonology, an allophone (; from the , állos, "other" and φωνή, phōnē, "voice, sound") is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds (or phones) or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, (as in pin) and (as in spin) are allophones for the phoneme in the English language. The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic context (such allophones are called positional variants), but sometimes allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme will usually not change the meaning of a word, although sometimes the result may sound non-native or even unintelligible. Native speakers of a given language usually perceive one phoneme in that language as a single distinctive sound, and are "both unaware of and even shocked by" the allophone variations used to pronounce single phonemes.

In Quebec, an allophone is a resident, usually an immigrant, whose mother tongue or home language is neither French nor English. The term can also be sometimes used in other parts of Canada. The term parallels Anglophone ( English-speaker), and Francophone, which designate people whose mother tongues are English and French, respectively. Note that native speakers of aboriginal languages are generally not treated as allophones.