The Homophone Principle

Last week, I shared my experience working on “irregular” past tense verbs with a client. That was only the first half of our session!

We came to the understanding that <-d> is a (non-productive) past tense suffix, which is why <heard> is the past tense form of the verb <hear>.

I asked my client what he wanted to talk about next. He wanted to talk about dogs, especially German Shepherds.

We then looked up <shepherd> on Etymonline and saw that it combines “sheep” (Old English <sceap> / <scep>) + herd.

So my bright client asked, “Herd…? Like I ‘heard’ it?” while pointing to his ear.

This was my first SWI-focused session in private practice, and the opportunities to teach this boy about the English language were just presenting themselves to me.

We talked about the spelling of <herd> and <heard>. We then went over the meaning of <herd>, and talked about <heard> as a past tense of <hear>… which you do with your ear.

I asked him if he was familiar with the lyrics of Carol of the Bells – I wanted to specifically address the lyric “Hark how the bells seemed to say…"

He wasn’t familiar with it, but if he was, I would have talked about the word “hark” (to listen). Hear, ear, hark… that <a> connects these words and distinguishes “heard” from “herd”.

<herd> and <heard> may sound the same, but the spelling is different, because the meaning is different.

This is an example of the Homophone Principle – two or more words may sound the same, but they would be spelled differently, if possible, in order to indicate a difference in meaning.

You can find more information about the Homophone Principle in The Real Spelling Online Toolbox.

This paper by Peter Bowers, of WordWorks Kingston, also offers a great introduction to the Homophone Principle.

David Freeman and Yvonne Freeman stated the following in their book Essential Linguistics* (2014, p. 160) - “Homophones are words that sound the same but may be spelled differently, like great and grate. The variations in spelling shows that the words mean different things. The variations in spellings of homophones signal important meanings to a reader that would be lost if every word that sounds the same were spelled the same way.”

For another example, consider these three words:

Where

There

Here

These words, which indicate location, are connected by their spelling. <here> and <hear> may sound the same, but the difference in meaning is expressed through spelling. Same goes for <there>, <their>, <they’re>, and <where>, <wear>.

Exploring the differences in the spelling of homophones is a great way to explore the English writing system with students, especially those who want to know why words are spelled the way they are.

Consider the past tense verb <threw> and the preposition <through>. The spelling of <threw> reflects its relationship with the present tense form <throw>.

Same goes for the pair blew/blue. The spelling of <blew> reflects its relationship with the present tense form <blow>.

Why are <write> and <right> spelled differently? It is my hypothesis that the <wr> in <write> connects it to words that, according to Etymonline, also have <wr> to indicate a tense of something turning or bending (wrist, wrestle, wrench, wreath, wrap). Old English riht leads to present day <right>.

What about inn/in, or bee/be? Inn and bee are lexical (content) words; in and be are function words. Lexical words (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs) typically have more letters than their homophones that are function words (pronouns, auxiliaries, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, etc.).

See Real Spelling’s video called Doubled Letters.

We would typically expect a content word to have more letters than its homophone, if it’s a function word. This convention does not apply to threw and through; however, it should be noted that <through> was commonly spelled <thro> from the 15th to the 18th centuries.

Keep in mind, however, that the pronunciation of words vary among speakers of English! As Gail Venable, author of Backpocket Words, pointed out to me, the words “hour” and “our” only sounded the same to me because I was saying these words in isolation. In conversation, “our” might sound closer to “are”, depending on the speaker.

It could be difficult to explain the differences between “hour”, “our” and “are” to children with dyslexia if you start with "sounding it out". Over-articulating these words would not help the spelling make more sense, either.

Going over the meaning of these words and analyzing the grapheme-phoneme correspondence, however, can be helpful to those children who struggle with talking about phonology. I hope to later share my perspective on "auditory processing" as it relates to language and literacy concerns.

All students need and deserve accurate information about English phonology, and this especially applies for children with dyslexia!

So, anyway, I wish I had the words to express the elation that I felt at the end of that session. Working on homophones is a powerful way of demonstrating the relationship between English as a spoken language and English as a written language.

*Freeman, D. E., & Freeman, Y. S. (2014). Essential linguistics: What teachers need to know to teach. Heinemann.