By Mary Arsenault, Staff Writer
We use homophones in daily life and rarely think about them when speaking, but when itโs time to write out the words and you realize there are 4 (four, for, fore) ways to spell that wordโฆ yeah, that’s where the problem lies.ย Homophones are defined as โone of two or more words pronounced alike but different in meaning or derivation or spelling.โ This has me thinking about how we got here. Are we really so uncreative that we had to use the same word so many times? There has got to be more to this. So I got my handy dandy notebook and wrote to one of our professors here at Pellissippi State Community College to see if I could get some answers.
Dear Professor,
So, there’s a problem. I know that correct spelling is important, but how on earth is someone supposed to know how to spell all these words that sound the same but have different meanings?
For example:
“Hi! I’m Mary. Nice to meat you. I am righting to you with a question.”
Apparently, that’s wrong.
What I meant was:
“Hi! I’m Mary. Nice to meet you. I am writing to you with a question.”
See?! What in the world? Honestly, someone had way too much thyme on their hands.
One typo away from academic probation,
Mary
Dear Mary,
Thank you for your wonderful question and clever examples in it. I think itโs worth starting by pointing out that a lot of us carry some spelling trauma from elementary school. Good spellers were praised and called smart; they got good grades and got to pick out tiny plastic junk from the treasure chest. Many kids thought that if you couldnโt spell well, it said something quite insulting about your intelligence. Of course, spelling and intelligence have very little to do with each other, especially since spelling is often taught as rote memorization, without a real explanation of why and how we got the spellings we did for the words we have. In that circumstance, every rule seems to have a million exceptions, and there is almost no way except endless drills to win that spelling bee.
Speaking of spelling bees, there are some behaviors you might observe in them that help those champion spellers get words correct. Letโs talk about them.
If you are slowly dozing off in a spelling bee audience, one thing you might note is that a participant might ask for the meaning of the word. That is because, in English especially, there are many homophones (words that sound the same, but are not the same). As you demonstrated in your question, I might meet you, and together we might eat meat, whereupon we might mete out a nice tip for the server. During our meal, we might taste some thyme in our roasted potatoes while we reminisce about old times. We might spring at the chance to meet again next spring, and use the spring on our diaryโs lock to spring it open so we can write down our next appointment.
You might also notice that a spelling champ might ask for the derivation of the word they are about to spell. That is because pronunciation and spelling are at least partially related to the rules of the language from which we get the word. For example, the word โchampionโ comes from French, and in French-derived words the โchโ makes a โchโ sound, like in change (also French) and chance. On the other hand, in words derived from Greek, the โchโ will make a โkโ sound, like in โarchitect.โ
We also have remnants of other earlier languages in our current spellings. For example, the word โknightโ has quite a number of silent letters, but they werenโt always silent. Just check out the Old English pronunciation of these words, and youโll realize the spelling is a relic of an old, much more guttural world.
Spelling can also be, frankly, arbitrary and cultural. Just ask the British about the colour and flavour of their food, or whether aluminium really needs that extra i, or whether the o and e in fลtid really need to be joined at their backs. A lot of the time, the spelling we consider the only correct one is just a snapshot of what was most common at the moment in time when people started writing dictionaries.
Finally, a spelling bee participant may ask about the part of speech. That is because we have many words that are spelled the same, but pronounced differently depending on their job in the sentence. For example, I refuse to take out your refuse. You can record your record here, but I will object to this object being in my kitchen.
Hope this helps,
Professor
First of all, thank you for what you said about spelling and intelligence having little to do with each other. I definitely have some spelling trauma, but once I realized how many people are in the same boat, it didn’t feel quite so heavy.
When it comes to grammar and spelling, I’ve come to realize that, like with many things in life, the more I know, the more I realize I don’t know. There is so much history involved โ the combining of cultures and languages, changing spelling conventions, and even random people writing dictionaries where whatever they decided was suddenly the “right” way to spell a word. It’s a lot to take in.
Understanding a word’s origin does make sense, though. As a kid, I never understood why contestants in spelling bees asked about a word’s origin. I didn’t get it. Now I do. Knowing where a word comes from can give clues about how it’s spelled and why it looks the way it does. And if you were curious about the old English pronunciation of knight like I was, Iโve linked a video here. It actually makes sense to spell it that way if we still spoke Old English. But since we don’t update spelling to match modern pronunciation, we’re often stuck with spellings that reflect how words sounded hundreds of years ago.
Thanks for joining me on this journey through the world of homophones. I’ll be back soon with more questions, and I hope you’ll join me again.
