What Are Phonemes and Graphemes?

Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word. For example, the word, at, has two sounds or phonemes, / ă / / t /. The word, dog, has three phonemes, / d / / ŏ / / g /. The word, box, has four phonemes, / b / / ŏ / / k / / s /. As evidenced by the word, box, phonemes are completely separate entities from the symbols that we call letters of the alphabet, or graphemes. A grapheme is the smallest part of written language that represents a phoneme in the spelling of a word. A grapheme may be just one letter, such as “t” or “d” or several letters, such as “aw” or “eigh”. Graphemes represent the phonemes in written language.