HOMOPHONES
I love the little quirks we find in the English language –
and there are many of them. Today, for
no other reason than to amuse myself, I was thinking about words that sound the
same, but are spelt differently and have very different meanings. For those wordies among you these are called homophones,
which literally means “same sound”, and there are lots and lots and lots of
them!
A good example is the words by, buy and bye. All these words are pronounced exactly the
same, and in spoken English we only understand which one is used by the context
of the sentence. He was stood by the
gate. In this sentence “by” means close
to. I am going to the shop to buy
chocolate. This time it means to purchase something. Finally, “bye bye”. Now it means farewell!
Then again we have “chews” as in chewing meat and “choose” as
in picking from several options. Or how about “night” as in the opposite of day
and “knight” as in being knighted by the Queen (a great honour!). I think one of my favourites has to be flew, the
past tense of to fly, and flu as in the horrible illness that makes your throat
sore and nose run!
There (their/they’re) really are loads of them, and I have no
(know) idea why. Why are words that are
not spelt the same or have no close meaning pronounced the same? It is just one
of the little idiosyncrasies that I love about language. Now I’ve started the idea in your mind I
wonder how many of you have started to think of a few yourself (like so and sew,
paw and pour and waist and waste). Once
you start to think about homophones you will realize just how many there are. Also,
you can have fun with them. Just as an aside, if you are going on a long
journey, ask the children to write down as many as they can think of as a good
game to stop them from getting bored (bawd/baud). Make it a competition and it
will keep them quiet for ages, maybe for hours (ours) and possibly stop them
asking “are we there yet” quite so many times!
However, on a more serious note choosing the wrong spelling
of a word in an important document can have disastrous results! It can make what you are trying to say incomprehensible.
Errors like this can make a letter, essay, job application or website appear unprofessional
or hurried. This could result in losing the chance of a job or promotion,
missing out on the college grade you need or losing customers. If you have
difficulties in making sense of this minefield, visit www.writtenenglishcorrected.com
and let us help. Don’t worry and stress
is this right, or is this write? Contact us for professional guidance.
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