What is a grapheme?

A grapheme is defined as the smallest unit of written language that represents a sound. This includes letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and diacritics. Therefore, the chosen answer correctly identifies graphemes as the written representation of phonemes (sounds).

Understanding graphemes is crucial for literacy, as they form the building blocks for decoding words and connecting sounds to their symbolic representations. For instance, in the word "cat," the graphemes 'c', 'a', and 't' correspond to the sounds /k/, /æ/, and /t/, respectively.

The other options, while relevant to language in some way, do not accurately define a grapheme. A combination of syllables refers more to phonological units rather than singular written representations, synonyms are about word meaning rather than form, and an oral representation of language pertains to spoken aspects, diverging from the focus on written language that graphemes signify.