Friday, March 23, 2018

Here's my homophone list - call me

To, Too, and Two made me think of homophones and homonyms.  With a simple search I find a lot of sites and a lot of people with an interest in homophones.  Here's the chart that shows the comparisons with bough and bow.  This chart comes from magickeys.com.   It shows all the variations - homonym, homophone, homograph and heteronym.  
 
 
 Same Sound / different meaningsSame Spelling / different meanings
   Homonyms   Homophones  Homographs  Heteronyms 
  Different Spelling Different Sound
  
bough  (tree limb)
bow  (front of a boat)
bow  (at the waist)
bow  (tied with ribbon)
bow  (shoots arrows)
bough
bow
bow



bow
bow
bough
bow
bough

bow

bow
bow
bow
bow

bow

bow


bow

bow
     


Wikipedia's list of homonyms is 246 words long.  I expect this is incomplete - there are a few sites dedicated to homophones - homophone.com is another one. I went on to find homophone jokes, which are plentiful.  Here's my selection. 

How many members of a convent does it take to change a light bulb?
Nun.
What did the chess piece say before bed?
Knight knight.
What does Santa say when gardening?
Hoe hoe hoe.
Why would a chess piece in charge of a city be like a bad dream?
Because it would be a knight mayor.
What is ice cream’s favorite day of the week?
Sundae.

What did one homophone say to comfort the other homophone?
Their, there, they’re.
If you enjoyed them, these jokes come from homophonelist.com  This site has a scrollable list that is extensive.  I had to scroll through it, and found a few that  are equal or better than bow:
  • lays, laze, leas, leis, leys
  • pa, pah, par, parr, pas
  • hair, aire, are, are, ere, eyre
And then I found the winner: 
  • ere, eyre, air, aire, are, ayre, heir
Is English the language with the most homophones?  No, it is Chinese! 

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