Bonus 17: Homonyms, homophones, and homographs
Added 2018-07-05 22:15:57 +0000 UTCEnglish is full of words that look the same, but are pronounced differently ('bow' ๐ and 'bow' ๐โ), or are pronounced the same but look different ('bow' ๐ and 'bough' ๐), and some that look the same and are pronounced the same but have different meanings ('bow' ๐ and 'bow' ๐น). Why does English do this? Does it really do it more than other languages? And how can we use homonyms to make weird and fun sentences in different languages?
In this bonus episode, we discuss homonyms, homophones and homographs. We get into the history of the language, explore some etymologies, and explore the classic Buffalo buffalo sentence and more excellent wordplay.
Thanks to Solitary Gamer for suggesting this topic! If you have favourite homonym/homophone/homograph wordplays in any language, do feel free to share them in the comments!
Links:
- Lingthusiasm pride scarf & Philadelphia pride scarf
- homo- prefix
- Michael on homonyms (Do Online Now Guys)
- chip, ear, punch
- Mary/merry/marry merger (Dialect Blog)
- bank
- Ellen/Allen merger
- Lassie/lassi (Twitter)
- rose๐น/rose๐ด
- bow/bow/bough
- English orthography (Wikipedia)
- Buffalo buffalo (Wikipedia, All Things Linguistic, image!)
- Boops boops (All Things Linguistic, Wikipedia)
- List of linguistic example sentences (Wikipedia)
- Lion-eating poet in the stone den (Chinese)
- Cats, kittens, lions, cubs (Japanese)
You can listen to this episode on this page, via the Patreon RSS or download the mp3. A transcript is available for this episode as a Google Doc. Lingthusiasm is also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com or chat to us on the Patreon page.
Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All ThingsLinguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.
Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire, our editorial producer is Emily, our production assistant is Celine, and our music is โAncient Cityโ by TheTriangles.
Comments
Ah, interesting! Good to know someone does have it! (And yes, we get notifications for them!)
Lingthusiasm
2020-03-29 02:32:46 +0000 UTCI don't know if you go back to old post comments but I did/ do have buffalo as a verb in my head. It might be from watching Saturday morning westerns in the sixties and seventies or from growing up in southern Saskatchewan. But it means fooled or tricked to me.
2020-03-26 00:27:36 +0000 UTCInteresting! This seems like it might be the near-square merger? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_vowel_changes_before_historic_/r/
Lingthusiasm
2019-07-17 00:19:19 +0000 UTC
