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Abstract. The problem of complex sounds (polyphthongs among vowels, affricates among consonants) is a detached one in theoretical phonetics, as it is connected with the general theory of speech flow segmentation. The question is as follows: whether a complex sound consisting of several phonetically heterogeneous sounds is one or several phonemes. One must note that there is no unambiguous, universal solution of this problem suitable for all the languages, as it is possible only for a specific language on the basis of studying its phonological system as a whole. The author emphasizes that this problem consideration should be implemented from merely linguistic positions using a morphological criterion as the basic one while determining the phonematic status of complex sounds. The issue is complicated by the fact that alongside with monophonemic complex sounds, sound combinations similar to them as to phonetic structure may be present in a language. This fact makes necessary to find phonetic differences between them, as phonological difference can’t exist without a phonetic one. The article provides examples from the English, German, Russian and Mongolian languages.

Key words and phrases: филология, теория языка, германистика, монголоведение, фонетика, сложные звуки, аффрикаты, philology, theory of language, Germanic studies, Mongolian studies, phonetics, complex sounds, affricates