Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning. A homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym.
You think English is easy? I think a retired English teacher was bored.
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Let’s face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
PS. – Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’?
“English is a funny language; that explains why we park our car on the driveway and drive our car on the parkway.” Some of our Germanic phrasal verbs are very weird. A Tunisian once told me that one of the things that amused him most about English was the way you could chop down a tree and then chop it up. Speakers of international English tend to avoid phrasal verbs, which is one of the reasons that their English sometimes sounds slightly stiff to native speakers.
English is my second language and it is very true that in order to appreciate your own language you have to know at least one more… and with this understanding one can see power and limitations of English. It is powerful all right, due in part to the fact that it is quite easy to learn (at least the basics of it) and quite logical one in its grammar (vs. its spelling), it is a language of choice for communicating between computers, technicians, scientists and a very poor language for communicating from heart to heart. Native English speakers have no concepts of what they are missing… It is even funny…when speaking to animals and children I unconsciously switch to my native tongue… Oh yes, you are not supposed to speak with animals… Oh yes, every living thing including babies have no gender and are IT in English… but cars and ships can be SHE…hmm… interesting… Oh, yes you have to pepper every sentence with I, MY, HAVE, GOT, WILL, AM, IS, ARE to such frequency that you infuse your Ego and property rights to the edge of Universe and delineate bounds of existence as it were a computer grid … Oh yes, there is no difference for ME between YOU, my friend, and infinite multitude of other strangers, who ARE also YOU… And so it goes…Keep capitalizing “I” and stripping soul from things with every word… the language where I HAVE said a lot and YOU WILL hear nothing. English is advanced modern language and a great tool to know, but I am very grateful that my native tongue is archaic, messy, ambiguous and deeply poetic language.
IA
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