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.
There are also pairs which ignore case and include both initialisms and regular words, e.g., US and us.[citation needed]
Heteronyms also occur in non-alphabetic languages. For example, 20% of the 2400 most common Chinese characters have multiple readings;[1][2][3]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';[4] it is unclear whether these should be considered heteronyms, since they are unambiguous when fully vocalized.
At night proctors patrolled the street and dogged your steps if you tried to go into any haunt where the presence of vice was suspected. (Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh)
Still, the dogged obstinacy of his race held him to the pace he had set, and would hold him till he dropped in his tracks. (Jack London, The Son of the Wolf)
This should be divided into packets of ten cartridges each, which should be rolled up in flannel and hermetically sealed in separate tin canisters. (Samuel W. Baker, The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia)
To stalk these wary antelopes I was obliged to separate from my party, who continued on their direct route. (Samuel W. Baker, The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia)
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].
^The official spelling since 1990 is ognon, but oignon is still more widely-used.[5]
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/;[6] Some of these distinctions are being neutralized in modern speech.[7]
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;[dubious – discuss][example needed]
⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ may have a vocalic (/i,u/) or a consonantal (/j,w/) value.[example needed]
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 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).
^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.
^David Holton, Peter Mackridge, Irene Philippaki-Warburton, Vassilios Spyropoulos, Greek: A Comprehensive Grammar of the Modern Language, 2nd edition, 2012, ISBN1136626387, p. 11
^Nick Nicholas, "The hiatus of διαζύγιο 'divorce'", Ἡλληνιστεύκοντος: Set Union of Greek and Linguistics (blog), 5 January 2011
^John J. Kinder, Vincenzo M. Savini, Using Italian: A Guide to Contemporary Usage, 2004, ISBN0521485568, pp. 83–87
^Tatjana Lackner, "Homographe", Die Schule des Sprechens, 12 January 2018, [1]
