Definition
of Homophone
According to Rippel (2007: 9) Homo means
same and phone
means sound, so
the word homophone literally
means same sound.
Homophones are two or
more words that
sound alike but
that are spelled differently
and have different
meanings. Sets of homophones include
billed and build, peace and piece, and sew, so, and sow.Homophones occur in
English because we have multiple ways to spell the same sound. For example:
a. The
sound of /n/ can be spelled with the letter n or the letter combination kn,
resulting in the homophones night and knight.
b. The
sound of /ā/ can be spelled a-consonant-e or
ay (among other
possible spellings), giving us daze and days.
c. The schwa
sound (the muffled
/uh/ sound of vowels
in unaccented syllables)
causes words like complement and
compliment to be pronounced alike
Davis and Herr (2003: 3) defines Homophones
are multiple words with identical pronunciation (phonological code). Hence,
multiple meanings share a common phonological link in memory
In addition Musmanno (2010: 20)
Homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings) can cause confusion and spelling problems.
Multiple exposures to the correctly spelled word can help! See picture
below:????
