In English, I believe the word is "phoneme" with an "e" on the end. It is a basic sound in the spoken language. If the alphabet were designed logically, every letter ought to stand for one phoneme, but, alas, this is not true. It is not strictly true even in Spanish, which is spelled almost phonetically, and it is most definitely not true in English. There is sentence, once used to test telephones: "Joe took father's shoe bench out. She was waiting on my lawn." It is supposed to contain every English phoneme. I think there are supposed to be about 44 of them. It is the spoken equivalent of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," which contains every letter of the alphabet.