Thursday, September 6, 2007

These words sound the same but...

Hey everyone. After last weeks spelling test I found out how truly grateful I am for spell check. Last week we learned about homonyms but my topic this week is on homophones which have always intrigued me. Taken from theWebster's New World English Grammar Handbook, "Hompohones are words that sound alike but have different meanings and different spellings." In the handbook there was a long list that showed multiple homophones. I won't write the whole list down but i'll give some examples.

Air: The elastic, mixture of gases that surrounds the earth.
Err: To be wrong or mistaken
Heir: A person who inherits or is legally entitled to inherit, through the natural action of the law, another's property or title upon the other's death.

So as you can see these are three similar sounding words but all three have different spelling and meanings. There are so many other words in the english language that are like this so it can get confusing at times.

1 comment:

Pat said...

That's right, Ryan. Thanks for bringing up this new topic. We'll talk about it tomorrow.