<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><metadata xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"><dc:title xml:lang="en">allophones</dc:title><dc:identifier>http://AATesaurus.cultura.gencat.cat/aat/getty_en?tema=31298034</dc:identifier><dc:language>en</dc:language><dc:publisher xml:lang="en">Getty Institute</dc:publisher><dcterms:created>2026-03-30 20:19:52</dcterms:created><dcterms:isPartOf xsi:type="dcterms:URI">http://AATesaurus.cultura.gencat.cat/aat/getty_en</dcterms:isPartOf><dcterms:isPartOf xml:lang="en">Tesaurus d&apos;Art i Arquitectura</dcterms:isPartOf><dc:format>text/html</dc:format> <dcterms:alternative xml:lang="en">allophone</dcterms:alternative> <dc:description xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[ In linguistics, phonetically distinct variants of a phoneme, usually distinguished from other variants by its position in the word or by its phonetic environment. Speakers of a language often have difficulty in hearing the phonetic differences between allophones of the same phoneme, because these differences do not serve to distinguish one word from another. In English, examples would be the "t" sounds in the words "hit," "tin," and "little."  ]]></dc:description></metadata>