What are phones in linguistics?

In linguistics, "phones" refer to the basic, individual sounds that are produced in spoken language. They are the physical sounds that are articulated, and they can be observed in the way they are pronounced by speakers. Phones are considered the raw material of spoken language because they form the building blocks of words and phrases.

When discussing phones, it is important to distinguish them from related concepts like phonemes, which are abstract representations of sounds that distinguish meaning in particular languages, and morphemes, which are the smallest units of meaning. The focus on phones emphasizes the actual sounds themselves, rather than their role in meaning or structure. This understanding is crucial for fields like phonetics and phonology, where audio characteristics of speech are studied in detail.