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There are many examples for allophones in languages other than English. Typically, languages with a small phoneme inventory allow for quite a lot of allophonic variation: examples are Hawaiian and Pirahã. Here are some examples (the links of language names go to the specific article or subsection on the phenomenon): Consonant allophones
For example, in Irish, an adjective undergoes lenition after a feminine singular noun: unmutated mór [mˠoːɾˠ] ' big ', mutated in bean mhór [bʲan woːɾˠ] ' a big woman ' In Welsh, a noun undergoes soft mutation when it is the direct object of a finite verb: unmutated beic [bəik] "bike", mutated in Prynodd y ddynes feic.
Another example in English of a phonemic contrast would be the difference between leak and league; the minimal difference of voicing between [k] and [g] does lead to the two utterances being perceived as different words. On the other hand, an example that is not a phonemic contrast in English is the difference between [sit] and [siːt]. [1]
A phoneme is a sound or a group of different sounds perceived to have the same function by speakers of the language or dialect in question. An example is the English phoneme /k/, which occurs in words such as cat, kit, scat, skit.
Examples include the loss (in most dialects) of the [ç] and [x] sounds still reflected by the gh in words like night and taught, and the splitting of voiced and voiceless allophones of fricatives into separate phonemes (such as the two different phonemes represented by th ).
Each phoneme may have multiple allophones, i.e. different realizations of the same phoneme. For example, in the /B/ handshape, the bending of the selected fingers may vary from straight to bent at the lowest joint, and the position of the thumb may vary from stretched at the side of the hand to fold in the palm of the hand.
To take an example from American English: the phoneme /t/ in the words "table" and "cat" would, in both a phonemic orthography and in IPA phonemic transcription, be written with the same character, while phonetic transcription would make a distinction between the aspirated "t" in "table", the flap in "butter", the unaspirated "t" in "stop" and ...
In linguistics a distinction is made between so-called "emic" and "etic" accounts. For example a phonemic description is one expressed in terms of phonemes, whereas a phonetic one is based on the phones actually produced. This distinction was generalized by Pike (1954) and is applied in various social and behavioral sciences.