Speech sounds tend to adjust to nearby sounds in systematic ways. Speech sounds tend to vary around a norm. The sound system of a language tends to be symmetrical. Phonological analysis is an essential part of determining how to write a language. Definitions Phonology is the study of how speech sounds are organized and how they function.
Phonology looks for the sound system within a particular language.
In every language there is variation, even within one speaker's pronunciation. In the example above, the presence or absence of word final aspiration does not change the meaning of the word 'bat'. A phoneme is a distinctive sound unit of a language. Some phonetically similar sounds are used as variant shapes of the same sound or phoneme. These variants are called allophones .