The elder of our two cars is starting to exhibit a few minor, but annoying, technical faults. Like: sometimes the Bluetooth connection to your phone will break and instead of music, you just get a non-stop high-pitched screaming sound which you can suppress by turning off the entertainment system… but can’t fix without completely rebooting the entire car.
The “wouldn’t you rather listen to screaming” problem occurred this morning. At the time, I was driving the kids to an activity camp, and because they’d been quite enjoying singing along to a bangin’ playlist I’d set up, they pivoted into their next-most-favourite car journey activity of trying to snipe at one another1. So I needed a distraction. I asked:
We’ve talked about homonyms and homophones before, haven’t we? I wonder: can anybody think of a pair of words that are homonyms that are not homophones? So: two words that are spelled the same, but mean different things and sound different when you say them?
This was sufficiently distracting that it not only kept the kids from fighting for the entire remainder of the journey, but it also distracted me enough that I missed the penultimate turning of our journey and had to double-back2
…in English
With a little prompting and hints, each of the kids came up with one pair each, both of which exploit the pronunciation ambiguity of English’s “ea” phoneme:
-
Lead, as in:
- /lɛd/ The pipes are made of lead.
- /liːd/ Take the dog by her lead.
-
Read, as in:
- /ɹɛd/ I read a great book last month.
- /ɹiːd/ I will read it after you finish.
These are heterophonic homonyms: words that sound different and mean different things, but are spelled the same way. The kids and I only came up with the two on our car journey, but I found many more later in the day. Especially, as you might see from the phonetic patterns in this list, once I started thinking about which other sounds are ambiguous when written:
- Tear (/tɛr/ | /tɪr/): she tears off some paper to wipe her tears away.
- Wind (/waɪnd/ | /wɪnd/): don’t forget to wind your watch before you wind your horn.
- Live (/laɪv/ | /lɪv/): I’d like to see that band live if only I could live near where they play.
- Bass (/beɪs/ | /bæs/): I play my bass for the bass in the lake.
- Bow (/baʊ/ | /boʊ/): take a bow before you notch an arrow into your bow.
- Sow (/saʊ/ | /soʊ/): the pig and sow ate the seeds as fast as I could sow them.
- Does (/dʌz/ | /doʊz/): does she know about the bucks and does in the forest?
(If you’ve got more of these, I’d love to hear read them!)
…in other Languages?
I’m interested in whether heterophonic homonyms are common in any other languages than English? English has a profound advantage for this kind of wordplay3, because it has weakly phonetics (its orthography is irregular: things aren’t often spelled like they’re said) and because it has diverse linguistic roots (bits of Latin, bits of Greek, some Romance languages, some Germanic languages, and a smattering of Celtic and Nordic languages).
With a little exploration I was able to find only two examples in other languages, but I’d love to find more if you know of any. Here are the two I know of already:
- In French I found couvent, which works only thanks to a very old-fashioned word:
- /ku.vɑ̃/ means convent, as in – where you keep your nuns, and
- /ku.və/ means sit on, but specifically in the manner that a bird does on its egg, although apparently this usage is considered archaic and the word couver is now preferred.
- In Portugese I cound pelo, which works only because modern dialects of Portugese have simplified or removed the diacritics that used to differentiate the
spellings of some words:
- /ˈpe.lu/ means hair, like that which grows on your head, and
- /ˈpɛ.lu/ means to peel, as you would with an orange.
If you speak more or different languages than me and can find others for me to add to my collection of words that are spelled the same but that are pronounced differently, I’d love to hear them.
Special Bonus Internet Points for anybody who can find such a word that can reasonably be translated into another language as a word which also exhibits the same phenomenon. A pun that can only be fully understood and enjoyed by bilingual speakers would be an especially exciting thing to behold!
Footnotes
1 I guess close siblings are just gonna go through phases where they fight a lot, right? But if you’d like to reassure me that for most it’s just a phase and it’ll pass, that’d be nice.
2 In my defence, I was navigating from memory because my satnav was on my phone and it was still trying to talk over Bluetooth to the car… which was turning all of its directions into a high-pitched scream.
3 If by “advantage” you mean “is incredibly difficult for non-native speakers to ever learn fluently”.
Do these qualify?
I want to record a record.
I frequent a bar often; it’s a frequent occurence.
Wow, I’d not even thought of those words whose pronunciation changes when they mutate verb<->noun or verb<->adjective, like those you suggest! They’re clearly related words, unlike many of my English examples, but they’re still each have distinct definitions.
I feel like they belong in their own class, but they’re certainly interesting!
German has the famous pair:
– umfahren /ˈʊmfaːrən/ ‘to knock over (by vehicle)’
– umfahren /ʊmˈfaːrən/ ‘to circumnavigate’
The former is separable, the latter isn’t.
German, of course, has a near-unparalleled quality of compositing words, which is probably a rich mine of such things.
I’d be less-likely to seek such answers in English, where combining words together to get answers would seem contrived. But in German, it makes perfect sense! I love it!
In French they are called homographes stéréophoniques.
« Mes fils ont cassé mes fils. »
« Elle est allée vers l’est. »
« Dans la cour du couvent, des poules couvent les œufs. »
« Tu as un as dans la main. »
« Cet homme est fier, peut-on s’y fier ? »
Source: https://langue-francaise.tv5monde.com/decouvrir/ne-plus-se-tromper/les-homographes
I can give you a joke that works when translated into three other languages:
Where does a cat go when it dies?
Purrgatory.
(when translated to French, or Spanish, or Portuguese the term for purgatory has a homphonic element with their word for cat)
I’ve heard the striking refuse workers were made a pay offer, but they chose to refuse it.
Similar to read and read, but different.
Danish has a few heterophonic homographs. Here are some of my favourites
• ‘vandret’ can mean either ‘horizontal’ (/’vanʁɑt/) or ‘wandered’ (/’vɑntʁəð/).
• ‘legende’ can mean either ‘legend’ (/le’ɡɛntə/ or ‘playing’ (/’lɑːjənə/).
• ‘pastaske’ can be read as either ‘pas-taske’ /’pʰasˌtˢaskə/ (‘a wallet for a passport’) or ‘pasta-ske’ /’pʰastaˌskḛː/ (‘a spoon for pasta’).
@Carsten Becker @Dan The semantics of German verb pairs like that one made a lot more sense to me when I read Robert Dewell’s book The Meaning of Particle/prefix Constructions in German. His analysis is based on the Cognitive Linguistics tradition that I was trained in, and I found it intuitive and convincing.
Another German example, this time from the world of compounds:
1. Hochzeit [ˈhɔxˌt͡saɪ̯t] high + time ‘wedding’
2. Hochzeit [ˈhoːxˌt͡saɪ̯t] high + time ‘ ‘the best time (like the golden age of sth)’
Both are lexicalized, but the second one is semantically slightly less opaque and the pronunciation of the adjective is the same as when it is used on its own as opposed to the reduced variant in 1.
#compoundWatch
asking electrical engineers to pronounce “coax” or chemists to pronounce “unionised”
(Co-axial cable and atoms without a charge, or tempt and workers with representation)
In Dutch ambiguous construction of composite words leads to a lot of these, e.g.
“massage-bed” (massage chair) vs “massa-gebed” (mass prayer)
Here’s a comprehensive list: https://onzetaal.nl/taalloket/homograaf-homogram
some more German examples
Weg (long e): way, path
weg (short e): gone
Lache (short a): the way someone laughs
Lache (long a): puddle
modern (stress on second syllable): modern
modern (stress on first syllable): to rot
August (stress on second syllable): the month August
August (stress on first syllable): the given name August
aktiv (stress on second syllable): active (adjective)
Aktiv (stress on first syllable): active (noun, grammatical voice)
Great Russian pair:
плачу “plaCHOO”: I’m paying
плачу “PLAchoo”: I’m crying
Swedish has a few of these, where pronunciation differs only in word accent, e.g.
anden (the duck, ánden)
anden (the spirit, ànden)
stegen (the steps, stégen)
stegen (the ladder, stègen)
vaken (the hole in the ice, váken)
vaken (awake, vàken)
and so on.
lots of French words ending in `-ent`
Président (like the “president of the republic”); pronounced roughly /pʀɛzɪdɔ̃/
vs président (they preside); pronounced /pʀɛzid/
@Head-Word Dør means either door or die (present tense). Pronunciation differs a bit also, but it’s Friday and I’m on the wrong kind of IPA.
these words are the terror of english as foreign language learners 😅
Possibly the most famous heterophone: The album “Live Baby Live” by INXS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Baby_Live
Norwegian: For. English: For.
Norwegian: For. English: Fodder.
The o’s are pronounced differently, I don’t have the vocabulary to explain it properly. (espeak-ng gives this: Fodder: fˈuːr. For: fˈɔrr.)
Intimate and intimate :-)
By the way, I went to Mallorca and forgot my phone, in case anyone wonders why they’re not being bombarded with photos of strange food- hot figs on creamy gnocchi, so good! Hope you’re well!
I remember getting annoyed as how produce and produce are not the same word and falling into this rabbit hole. In Spanish we would a diacritical mark (`) to mark where the word should be stressed. Nothing of the sorts exists in English sadly (or I should I say fortunately?)
I was just trying to think of some Welsh ones – they’re pretty rare given the generally phonetic nature of the language, and our smattering of diacriticals. The few I can think of are:
Wyn (OO-in): lambs
Wyn (win): either a mutated form of Gwyn (white) or a name.
Sou you could say “Wyn wyn Wyn” (lambs white Wyn) to say “Wyn’s white lambs”
There’s also “glan” – short a is shore (and also up in south walian), or with a long a it means clean. So “glan glan” (pronounced glan glān) would be clean shore.
The only other I can think of become very contrived after that – “iau iau iau” (younger livers of ice, OR Jupiter’s younger ices, depending on pronunciation.
Iau (ee-AYE): Jupiter, livers, younger
Iau (yay): ices
The repair team got absolutely filthy working down in the sewers and when some of their clothes got damaged they couldn’t be used until they’d been repaired by a team of sewers.