Homophone

Homophones are often used to create puns and to deceive the reader (as in crossword puzzles) or to suggest multiple meanings.

During the 1980s, an attempt was made to promote a distinctive term for same-sounding multiple words or phrases, by referring to them as "oronyms",[b] but the term oronym was already well established in linguistics as an onomastic designation for a class of toponymic features (names of mountains, hills, etc.

Spelling alteration (often based on etymology) can also obscure homophony, such as the case of colonel, which prevailed over the historical variant coronel by the late Modern English period, but which is now still pronounced identically to kernel as if the r were still there in the spelling.

Policy ("way of management") and policy ("insurance contract") come from two distinct Greek words that ended up homophonous in English, πολῑτείᾱ /poliːtěːaː/ (whence Latin polītīa and French polic(i)e) and ἀπόδειξις /apódeːksis/ (whence Latin apodīssa, Italian polizza and French police).

[14] Epenthesis, which often occurs at the boundary between a nasal and a fricative, can cause some words that are phonemically distinct to become phonetically homophonous.

Regional variation is especially common in words that exhibit the long vowels ä and e. According to the well-known dictionary Duden, these vowels should be distinguished as /ɛ:/ and /e:/, but this is not always the case, so that words like Ähre (ear of corn) and Ehre (honor) may or may not be homophones.

An extreme example is the pronunciation [kì̥kóō] which, accounting for the "flat" pitch accent, is used for the following words: Upon adoption from Middle Chinese into Early Middle Japanese, certain sounds were modified or simplified to match Japanese phonology, causing homophony.

Furthermore, there were vowel fusions and mergers during Late Middle Japanese which furthered even more homophony.

For example, 機構, 奇功, 起稿 and 紀行 were once pronounced distinctly as [kikou], [kikoũ], [kikau] and [kikaũ], but now all as [kikoo].

Due to Chinese being pronounced with varying tones and Korean's removal of those tones, and because the modern Korean writing system, Hangeul, has a more finite number of phonemes than, for example, Latin-derived alphabets such as that of English, there are many homonyms with both the same spelling and pronunciation.

For example, Using hanja (한자; 漢字), which are Chinese characters, such words are written differently.

Due to phonological constraints in Mandarin syllables (as Mandarin only allows for an initial consonant, a vowel, and a nasal or retroflex consonant in respective order), there are only a little over 400 possible unique syllables that can be produced,[19] compared to over 15,831 in the English language.

Yì, for example, has at least 125 homophones,[22] and it is the pronunciation used for Chinese characters such as 义, 意, 易, 亿, 议, 一, and 已.

For example, the Standard Mandarin word 狮子(shīzi, meaning "lion") was simply 狮 (shī) in Classical Chinese, and the Standard Mandarin word 教育 (jiàoyù, "education") was simply 教 (jiào) in Classical Chinese.

The cultural phenomenon brought about by such linguistic characteristics is that from ancient times to the present day, people have been keen to play games and jokes with homophonic and harmonic words.

In recent years, receiving the influence of Internet pop culture, young people have invented more new and popular homophones.

[23] Homophones even play a major role in daily life throughout China, including Spring Festival traditions, which gifts to give (and not give), political criticism, texting, and many other aspects of people's lives.

[25] While in most cases, the lack of phonemic tones in music does not cause confusion among native speakers, there are instances where puns may arise.

Examples include: порог — порок — парок, луг — лук, плод — плот, туш — тушь, падёж — падёшь, бал — балл, косный — костный, предать — придать, компания — кампания, косатка — касатка, привидение — приведение, кот — код, прут — пруд, титрация — тетрация, комплимент — комплемент.

Also, the infinitive and the present (or simple future) tense of the third person of the same verb are often pronounced the same way (in writing they differ in the presence or absence of the letter Ь (soft sign) before the postfix -ся): (надо) решиться — (он) решится, (хочу) строиться — (дом) строится, (металл может) гнуться — (деревья) гнутся, (должен) вернуться — (они) вернутся.