Phoneme recognition is the first step performed by speech recognition software. It involves splitting the input voice signal and matching each segment to a known phoneme. See http:/electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/high-tech-gadgets/speech-recognition.htm for more.

Yes, phonemes is the plural of phoneme.

a phoneme

no. phoneme is the smallest unit in a sound in a word.

There are two phonemes in the word "phoneme." The "ph" sound represents one phoneme (/f/) and the "oneme" part represents another (/oʊ/).