Here's a breakdown:
* Phoneme: A basic unit of sound in a language. It's the smallest unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another.
* Example: The word "cat" has three phonemes: /k/, /æ/, and /t/. Changing any of these phonemes would change the word.
It's important to note that phonemes are not the same as letters. One letter can represent multiple phonemes, and one phoneme can be represented by multiple letters.