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A heteronym (also known as a heterophone) is a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word but the same spelling. These are homographs that are not homophones. Thus, lead (/ˈlɛd/ the metal) and lead (/ˈliːd/ a leash) are heteronyms, but mean (/ˈmin/ average) and mean (/ˈmin/ intend) are not, since they are pronounced the same. Heteronym pronunciation may vary in vowel realisation, in stress pattern, or in other ways.

Description

A heteronym is a homograph that is not a homophone, a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word with the same spelling. Heteronym pronunciation may vary in vowel realisation, in stress pattern, or in other ways.

"Heterophone" literally just means "different sound", and this term is sometimes applied to words that are just pronounced differently, irrespective of their spelling. Such a definition would include virtually every pair of words in the language, so "heterophone" in this sense is normally restricted to instances where there is some particular reason to highlight the different sound. For example, puns normally involve homophones, but in the case of heterophonic (or imperfect) puns, the two words sound different, and yet similar enough for one to suggest the other (for example, mouth and mouse).

Types

Most heteronyms are doubles. Triple heteronyms are extremely rare in English; three examples, sin, mobile and does, are listed below.

Proper nouns can sometimes be heteronyms. For example, the final syllable in the US state of Oregon is pronounced /-ən/ (or /-ɪn/), while in the name of the village of Oregon in Wisconsin, the final syllable is pronounced /-ɒn/. Other examples include local pronunciations of Cairo, Georgia; Versailles, Kentucky; and Milan, Tennessee—compared to the more well-known Cairo, Versailles, and Milan—or the difference between the pronunciation of Louisville, Kentucky (/ˈluːəvəl/) and the town of Louisville, New York (/ˈluːɪsvɪl/).

There are also pairs which ignore case and include both initialisms and regular words, e.g., US and us.

Heteronyms also occur in non-alphabetic languages. For example, 20% of the 2400 most common Chinese characters have multiple readings; e.g., 行 can represent háng 'profession' or xíng 'OK'. In Arabic, vowels are normally not written, leading to ambiguous written words such as <كتب> /ktb/, which can be read /kataba/ 'he wrote', /kutubun/ 'books', or /kutiba/ 'it was written'; it is unclear whether these should be considered heteronyms, since they are unambiguous when fully vocalized.

Examples

Heteronyms with definitions

English

In some of these cases, American and British English pronunciations differ. One systematic case appears in the stress pattern of some deverbal nouns. Many of these words have the same origin, and similar meanings, and are essentially the same word. True heteronyms require the two words to be completely unrelated, which is a rare occurrence.

For a longer list, see wikt:Category:English heteronyms.

French

In French, most heteronyms result from certain endings being pronounced differently in verbs and nouns. In particular, -ent as a third person plural verb ending is silent while as an adjective ending, it is pronounced IPA: [ɑ̃].

1. The official spelling since 1990 is ognon, but oignon is still more widely-used.

Modern Greek

Modern Greek spelling is largely unambiguous, but there are a few cases where a word has distinct learned and vernacular meaning and pronunciation, despite having the same root, and where <ia> is pronounced /ja/ vs. /i.a/; Some of these distinctions are being neutralized in modern speech.

Italian

Italian spelling is largely unambiguous, althouɡh there are some exceptions:

• open and closed ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ (/ɛ, e/ and /ɔ, o/) are not distinguished;
• the voiced and unvoiced pronunciations of ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ (/s, z/ and /ts, dz/) are not distinguished;
• stress, which is usually but not always on the penult, is not marked except when it is on the final syllable;
• in some cases, digraphs and trigraphs like ⟨sci⟩ (/ʃ(i)/), ⟨ci⟩ (/tʃ(i)/), ⟨gi⟩ (/dʒ(i)/), ⟨gli⟩ (/ʎ(i)/) are pronounced using the values of their component letters;
• ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ may have a vocalic (/i, u/) or a consonantal (/j, w/) value.

When stress is on the final, the vowel is written with an accent: mori 'mulberries' and morì 'he/she died'. Some monosyllabic words are also differentiated with an accent: e /e/ 'and' and è /ɛ/ 'he/she is'. These cases are not heteronyms.

Some common cases:

Dutch

Dutch has heteronyms which vary in stress position, known as klemtoonhomogramen 'stress homograms', such as appel: [ˈɑpəl] 'apple' vs. [ɑˈpɛl] 'appeal' (formerly written appèl). Other examples include beamen, bedelen, hockeyster, kantelen, misdadiger, overweg, verspringen, verwerpen.

The word plant is generally pronounced [plɑnt], but may be pronounced [plɛnt] in the sense 'he/she plans'.

German

German has few heteronyms, for example:

• Some vary in stress position: umfahren 'to knock down' vs. umfahren 'to bypass'; übersetzen 'to translate' vs. übersetzen 'to traverse'; Spiegelei 'fried egg' vs. Spiegelei 'mirroring'.
• Some are compounded differently: Staubecken as Stau-becken vs. Staub-Ecken or Wachstube as 'Wach-stube' vs. 'Wachs-tube'; etc.
• Several are borrowings: modern 'to molder' (derived from Moder) vs. modern 'modern' (borrowed from French) or Montage 'Mondays' vs. Montaĝe 'mounting, installing, assembling' (the latter borrowed from French).

See also

• Homograph
• Homonym
• Synonym
• Shibboleth

Notes

1. "Common Heteronyms In Chinese". chinesevoyage.org. 10 July 2024. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
2. Swofford, Mark (2010). "Chinese Characters with Multiple Pronunciations". Pinyin.info. Retrieved 4 July 2016.
3. Wang, Xiao-lei (22 October 2015). Maintaining Three Languages: The Teenage Years. Multilingual Matters. p. 64. ISBN 978-1-78309-448-6.
4. Grosvald, Michael; Al-Alami, Sarah; Idrissi, Ali (2019). "Word Reading in Arabic: Influences of Diacritics and Ambiguity". Proceedings of the 36th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics: 176.
5. "« Oignon » ou « ognon » ? [orthographe] | La langue française ". La langue française. 21 December 2018.
6. David Holton, Peter Mackridge, Irene Philippaki-Warburton, Vassilios Spyropoulos, Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern Language, 2nd edition, 2012, ISBN 1136626387, p. 11
7. Nick Nicholas, "The hiatus of διαζύγιο 'divorce'", Ἡλληνιστεύκοντος: Set Union of Greek and Linguistics (blog), 5 January 2011
8. John J. Kinder, Vincenzo M. Savini, Using Italian: A Guide to Contemporary Usage, 2004, ISBN 0521485568, pp. 83–87
9. Tatjana Lackner, "Homographe", Die Schule des Sprechens, 12 January 2018,

• Types of words
• Homonymy