In linguistics (particularly phonetics and phonology), the '''phonetic environment''' of any given instance of a ''phone'', a human speech sound, consists of the other phones adjacent to and surrounding it. A speech sound's phonetic environment, sometimes more broadly called its '''phonological environment''', can determine its allophonic or phonemic qualities in a given language.

For example, the English vowel sound [æ], traditionally called the ''short A'', in a word like ''mat'' (phonetically [mæt]), has the consonant [m] preceding it and the consonant [t] following it, while the [æ] vowel itself is word-internal and forms the syllable nucleus. This all describes the phonetic environment of [æ].

==See also== * Allophone * Complementary distribution * Contrastive distribution * Free variation * List of phonetics topics * Minimal pair * Phoneme

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== * [http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnEnvironment.htm What is an environment?]{{dead link|date=March 2026}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Phonetic environment (Phonetics)}} Category:Phonetics Category:Phonology

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