Thursday, July 31, 2014

Attack of the homophones!

Delightful story in the always delightful Wonkette about a guy who got fired for writing a blog post about homophones, because it sounded too ... icky.  It kind of sounded like another word, you might say.  Of course they had to use the tired old "cunning linguist" joke, but at least with a good graphic.

I did guffaw a bit (but daintily) when I saw their picture of an illustration the firee used in his blog post:

I mean, the very first one is a really bad example!  Tell me you don't look at it and say [rɛd] ~ [rijd].  And BTW, ant ~ aunt only works for some dialects.

It's just as well he got fired.  What might he have brought up next - polysemy???

2 comments:

Dianna said...

I looked at the illustration before I read the text, and I have to admit I didn't think the first one was a bad example at first - because I read "read" exactly the way I've used it several times already in this comment - in the past tense. But that makes it a confusing example, because "read" is spelled the same in its infinitive form and its past tense. Otherwise, though, the only other questionable example is "ant" and "aunt."

Anonymous said...

i'm really sad you praise wonkette..always seems to me nat enquirer, or kardashian for those to stuckup to admit liking the nat enquirer