Aiyah, English So Difficult

Homophones, Heteronyms and Homographs

Words with the same kind of spelling can be pronounced in a variety of different ways. Take ‘ough’ for example:

If that wasn’t bad enough, even if words have the same spelling, they can also be pronounced differently and have different meanings:

English also includes the most words that have the same type of spelling, but are pronounced differently.

Here are some more.

And of course there are homophones. This is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose (flower) and rose (past tense of “rise”), or differently, such as to, two, and too. A ‘multinym’ can have as many as seven spellings, and this record goes to: Raise, rays, rase, raze, rehs, réis, res