Definitions

1. adjective

relating to the sound or appearance of words when spoken, especially in terms of their pronunciation or spelling.

“The phonetic spelling of Chinese characters can be difficult to learn for non-native speakers.”

2. noun

a system or method of representing the sounds of spoken language in written form, especially by using symbols or letters to indicate the sounds of words.

“The phonetic alphabet is widely used in radio communication to avoid confusion between similar-sounding letters.”

3. noun

a unit of sound in a language, especially a vowel or diphthong, that is pronounced as a single sound.

“The phonetic transcription of the word ‘cat’ includes the sounds /k/, /æ/, and /t/.”