Homonyms

[vilakins]

LJ has put up a resource page explaining common homonyms which are easily confused by some people. This is a very good thing; it's clear, funny, and Quizilla should use something similar (tho I suspect they're polisy is too have as many mis-takes as posible inn each quiz).

I'm puzzled though -- 'our' and 'are' are homonyms? Not where I come from.

Comments

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

They are in my dialect. They both sound like "arr."

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

They're not in mine in theory, but often are in practice. (I suspect mine are a bit more precise than most, a lot of the time, and even I slip, because I could definitely read their examples that way.)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

In mine they're close to what's heard on B7. 'Are' is 'ah' unless followed by a vowel (as in "Are all of them going?") when it's 'arr'. The closest I can get to 'Our' is 'ow-ah' but not that obvious.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Where I live they're more like 'arr' and 'owr'.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Think they should put in "of" and "'ve".

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

That was the drawback they found with ITA (initial teaching alphabet) thirty years ago. The idea was one symbol = one sound would make it easier for children to learn to read. Regional accents confused the whole thing, they assumed barth and garahge when half the country says bath(short a sound) and garidge. And so on through many other sounds. Then you had the transition to standard spelling in real books. It dropped out of use quite quickly for an educational initiative".

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I can imagine! I say garage as garahge but with both syllables equal; there are three pronunciations of it here. And I note you give bath as 'barth' but one can only do that where people don't pronounce that sort of R.

Sigh. Pity English isn't phonetic like German and Italian.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have said bahth. I'm a Black Country wench, we say bath and garidge.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Shame they can't spell "possession".

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Eep! I didn't notice that! They should've used their own spellchecker.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Where I come from, "been" and "bin" are homonyms, which of course is not true everywhere. And a lot of the things that Shakespeare thought rhymed, no longer do from where I'm sitting.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I've heard Shakespeare read in what they think was the Elizabethan pronunciation. One of the things I remember was words like 'family' rhyming with 'lie'. And that it flowed so beautifully.