In English we have noticed twenty-five consonant and about twenty vowel phonemes. Although individual pronunciations may differ, the phonemic habits … - John Rupert Firth

Speech is our most valuable instrument, because we can make it fit our common lives. We are not born to follow words. Words follow life. It has always been so from the very beginning. In fact, the human larynx and the shape of the passages above it have evolved in harmony with the lives our earliest ancestors lived, first in the trees, and then on the ground.

It is not easy to determine what are the units of speech. Some would say speech sounds, others phonemes... The general opinion is, however, that words, not phones or phonemes or phoneme systems, are the units of speech.

The complete meaning of a word is always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from context can be taken seriously.