For example, these words are homophones in American English, but not in British English: hostel/hostile, balm/bomb, caught/cot, halve/have. However, national and regional accents change the way people pronounce words and sometimes this creates different homophones. Most of these are the same in American English too. In this guide, we will focus on homophones in British English.
In the past, these words would have been pronounced differently, but today they all sound the same in modern English. For example: right (Old English: riht) vs. Many words have been borrowed from other languages through the centuries and this explains why English spelling is so strange (or confusing!). The term homophone comes from Greek ‘homo-’ (meaning: same) and ‘- phone’ (meaning: sound or voice), so the word literally means: ‘same sound’.Įnglish has more homophones than most languages because its pronunciation has changed a lot over time, while its spelling has changed very little. These words are often spelt differently in English too (e.g. Homophones are two or more words that sound the same (identical pronunciation), but have different meanings. Quiz: Test your understanding of English homophones Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere.
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