What is the Meaning & Definition of phoneme

At the behest of Phonetics, a phoneme will be each minimum phonological units who oppose others generating a significant contrast in a language. Thus for example the phoneme s opposes the phoneme n, allowing us to distinguish the sentence word of the word it weighs. Meanwhile, the phoneme is also the minimum unit of spoken language, because it is a sound of speech that allows you to differentiate between so many words of a language, so for example the phonemes s and t in coso and as; or s and c in single and tail. The above mentioned words: coso/as, single / tail, penalty/pesa, have completely different meanings, although the pronunciation of each pair differs just mentioned sounds. Meanwhile, structurally speaking, the phoneme belongs to the realm of language, on the other hand, the sound to the field of speech. The sounds of the words are called allophones. A same phoneme might have different allophones, as well as with gas and people. Other very common situations are also matching letters or make the lyrics sound like more phonemes, for example, the c sounds like the k and s like z. Phonemes are not sound in terms of physical entity, but rather is abstractions formal or psychological traces that are left in the sounds of speech. Note also, that phone and phoneme are not the same, because the fono or sound is characterized by a series of phonetic and articulatory features, whose identification is performed exclusively by Phonetics. Therefore, the phone will any of the possible acoustic realizations of a phoneme. Then, in short, the phoneme is distinctive phonological unit (each phoneme is anchored within the system by the qualities that distinguish it from others and also by its own significant intention), abstract (because actually the phoneme is not a sound but an ideal type of sound) and indivisible linearly (not may be broken down into smaller units). On the other hand, we also call phonemes to each of the simple sounds of spoken language.