Question

If you hear the words "cat" and "hat" you can hear a single sound difference at the beginning of each of those words, which is important because it makes the two words have different meanings. What is the general term that descriptive linguists use to describe an important sound difference that affects word meanings?

Answer 1

phoneme

Step-by-step explanation:

Phonetics are very important to understand a language. Because with a little bit of variance on the pronunciation can make great difference on the word meanings. Some sounds are very similar and easy to the listeners to be confused. Sometimes the accent variation due to the location, city (urban and country) can affect word meaning.