weight vs. heightor (my favourite):
foot vs. food
cough vs. enough vs. plough vs. though. vs. through.That's right, 5 distinct sounds from the letters 'ough'.
We also get the interesting phenomenon that one set of letters, with different pronunciations can have totally different meanings. For example.
He decided to desert the army.
Camels live in the desert.
This is an example of heteronyms. Heteronyms are different to homonyms which have the same pronounciation and spelling, but a different meaning. These are different again to heterographs, homophones and synonyms. The table below defines the potential relations between words. It is taken mostly from this venn diagram
Meaning | Spelling | Pronunciation | |
No Relation | Different | Different | Different |
Homophone | Different | - | Same |
Heterograph | Different | Different | Same |
Heteronym | Different | Same | Different |
Homonym | Different | Same | Same |
Different Spelling | Same | Different | Same |
Different Pronunciation | Same | Same | Different |
Synonym | Same | Different | Different |
Same Word | Same | Same | Same |
- No relation: Two word words which are not related in any sense.
- Homophones: Words which sound the same, but have different meanings. Further split into the following two categories:
- Heterographs: Homophones with different spellings. "There", "Their" and "They're" is a classic example.
- Homonyms: Homophones with the same spelling. E.g. "Right" (direction) vs. "Right" (entitlement).
- Heteronyms: Words that are spelt the same but have a different sound and meaning. E.g. "desert" (leave) vs. "desert" (sahara) as in the above example.
- Different Spelling: No technical word here, just words which mean and sound the same but are spelt differently. e.g. "Labor" (US spelling) vs. "Labour" (British Spelling).
- Different Pronunciation: Again, no technical word, just two words which are written and mean the same, but sound different. E.g. 'the elephant' vs. 'the circus'. ('the' takes a different sound in each).
- Synonyms: Two words with the same meaning, but different pronunciations and written forms. e.g. "friend" and "companion". Useful for lexical simplification as synonyms can be ranked according to their simplicity.
- Same Word: No difference here whatsoever.
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