Allophone
A variant realisation of a phoneme that does not change the meaning of a word. Allophones are the actual sounds we produce when speaking, determined by context and speaker characteristics.
Real World
In Cockney English, the word 'butter' is often pronounced with a glottal stop [ʔ] instead of [t], yet listeners still understand the word — the glottal stop is simply an allophone of /t/ in that accent.
Exam Focus
Distinguish allophones from phonemes by showing the variant does not change word meaning in your analysis.
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