What is phonemic variation?
Also, what is meant by free variation?
Definition: Free variation is the interchangeable relationship between two phones, in which the phones may substitute for one another in the same environment without causing a change in meaning. Discussion: Free variation may occur between allophones or phonemes.
Considering this, what is the difference between phonetic and phonemic?
Differences between phonemic and phonetic transcriptions. Phonetic transcriptions provide more details on how the actual sounds are pronounced, while phonemic transcriptions represent how people interpret such sounds. We use square brackets to enclose phones or sounds and slashes to enclose phonemes.
The phoneme inventory of a language is the set of speech sounds that are distinctive. It is a property of English that these vowels are distinguished: in another language the difference between oː and ou may not be linguistically relevant.