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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
Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ʔ , originally had the form of a question mark with the dot removed. A few letters, such as that of the voiced pharyngeal fricative, ʕ , were inspired by other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter ﻉ , ʿayn, via the reversed apostrophe). [9]
This partial list of languages is sorted by a partial count of phonemes (generally ignoring tone, stress and diphthongs). Estimates of phoneme-inventory size can differ radically between sources, occasionally by a factor of several hundred percent.
The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association.
A phoneme might be represented by a combination of two or more letters (digraph, trigraph, etc.), like sh in English or sch in German (both representing the phoneme /ʃ/). Also a single letter may represent two phonemes, as in English x representing /gz/ or /ks/.
Simplified chart / decision tree to determine whether two sounds which occur in the words of a language are allophones of the same phoneme, separate phonemes, or in free variation. For explanations of terms and procedures, see articles Allophone, Complementary distribution, Minimal pair, Free variation, and Phoneme.
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents.In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most South Asian languages and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive.
Some phonemes have palatalized allophones in certain contexts, typically before front vowels and unpalatalized allophones elsewhere. Because it is allophonic, palatalization of this type does not distinguish words and often goes unnoticed by native speakers. Phonetic palatalization occurs in American English.