Phonemes

  Phonemes can be conceived as being the  

  smallest   sound units in the language.  When a  

  person learns a new language much of aural

  understanding stems from a development of  

  phonemic discrimination.

  The four links below provide various views of  

  phonemes.

  Making Friends with Phonemes

    Wikipedia provides concise definitions of

   phonemes.

   Answers.com expands on the concepts developed

   by the two links above.

   Romanization   gives us an overview of the development of alphabetized systems for reading Chinese.