- What are homophone words?
- Examples of homophone words in Spanish
- Sentences with homophone words in Spanish
- Homophone words and homograph words
- Homophone and homonymous words
We explain what homophone words are, various examples and sentences that use them. Also, homograph and homonymous words.
What are homophone words?
Homophone words are those that sound the same, despite meaning entirely different things. Therefore, any two words that are pronounced the same but have different referents, will be known as homophones (from the Greek homoios, "Equal", and phone, "Voice" or "sound").
Homophony is a common phenomenon in languages, which often increases the difficulty of speaking and mastering them, since it sound perceived can respond to different morphological elaborations (words) or semantics (meanings). In other words, homophone words can be spelled the same or differently, but they always mean different things.
It is, to cite an example, what happens in English with meat ("meat and meet ("Meet" or "present"), between which there is a very narrow phonetic variation, if any. Or in Spanish, in the case of Wow (from the verb to go) and berry (a wild fruit).
Examples of homophone words in Spanish
Some simple examples of homophone words in our language are the following:
- Go (from the verb to go) / Valla (advertisement)
- House (to live) / Hunting (hunting)
- Close (close in distance) / Close (boundary, wire)
- Bat (batting instrument) / Vate (poet or fortune teller)
- Cup (for coffee) / Tax (for appraisal)
- Pound (unit of weight) / Pound (from the verb librar)
- One (the number) / One (from the verb to unite)
- Ay (expression of pain) / Hay (from the verb have)
- Bello (that has beauty) / Hair (body hairs)
- Vast (very large or extensive) / Coarse (coarse, clumsy)
- Done (from the verb to do) / Echo (from the verb to throw)
- Ve (imperative of the verb to see) / Ve (imperative of the verb to go)
- Juniper (plant species) / Enhebro (from the verb to thread)
- Bounce (throw away) / Vote (in an election) / Bounce (bounce a ball)
- Asia (the continent) / Towards (towards)
- Sew (with needle) / Cook (with kitchen)
- Glass (to drink Water) / Baso (from the verb to base)
Sentences with homophone words in Spanish
Similarly, some prayers Possible homophones with words in them are:
- Son, go to the corner and see if Jacinta arrived.
- I am undone, almost that I am a waste.
- In such a vast world, you don't have to be rough.
- So-and-so doesn't understand the use of the spindle.
- Oh, if I could only know what is in my destiny!
- I throw it away because it is not well done.
- I vote well, I don't throw my right away.
- Hello beautiful sea, send me a wave!
- On vacation they go to Asia.
- A woman has to learn to bake and sew.
- He would have come earlier, but the front door would not open.
- You should know that in poker I am an ace.
Homophone words and homograph words
Just as there are homophone words, that is, they share sound, there are also homograph words, that is, they share a spelling or form of writing.
For example, solo (only) and solo (solitary) are written in the same way, although they mean different things, which is why the first was traditionally written with an accent (its use is no longer mandatory). This phenomenon is known as homography (from the Greek homoios, "Equal", and graphos, "writing").
Sometimes two homophone words can be homographs too, as in the case already seen up close (close to) or close (separation, wiring).
Homophone and homonymous words
Now, both homophony and homography are forms of homonymy, which is a linguistic phenomenon in which two words of different origin and different meaning share a shape. By "form" we can refer to both sound (homophones) and writing (homographs), being that in both cases we speak of homonymous words (from the Greek homoios, "Equal", and nymos, "Name").
In summary, homonymous words are divided into two types: homographs (they share the way they are written) and homophones (they share the way they are pronounced).