The Poetry of R.E. Slater: May 6, 2020

"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Homophones, Homonyms, and Homographs for Children

References & Definitions

HOMOPHONE

Wikipedia - A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A homophone may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, such as rose (flower) and rose (past tense of "rise"), or differently, such as carat, and carrot, or to, two, and too. The term "homophone" may also apply to units longer or shorter than words, such as phrases, letters, or groups of letters which are pronounced the same as another phrase, letter, or group of letters. Any unit with this property is said to be "homophonous". Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms.

HOMONYM

Wikipedia - In linguistics, homonyms, broadly defined, are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation) or homophones (words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. For example, according to this definition, the words row (propel with oars), row (argument) and row (a linear arrangement) are homonyms, as are the words see (vision) and sea (body of water).

A more restrictive or technical definition sees homonyms as words that are simultaneously homographs and homophones – that is to say they have identical pronunciation and spelling, whilst maintaining different meanings. Examples are the pair stalk (part of a plant) and stalk (follow/harass a person) and the pair left (past tense of leave) and left (opposite of right).

A distinction is sometimes made between true homonyms, which are unrelated in origin, such as skate (glide on ice) and skate (the fish), and polysemous homonyms, or polysemes, which have a shared origin, such as mouth (of a river) and mouth (of an animal).

The relationship between a set of homonyms is called homonymy, and the associated adjective is homonymous.

The adjective "homonymous" can additionally be used wherever two items share the same name, independent of how closely they are or are not related in terms of their meaning or etymology.

HOMOGRAPH

Wikipedia - A homograph (from the Greek: ὁμός, homós, "same" and γράφω, gráphō, "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also sound different, while the Oxford English Dictionary says that the words should also be of "different origin". In this vein, The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography lists various types of homographs, including those in which the words are discriminated by being in a different word class, such as hit, the verb to strike, and hit, the noun a blow.

If, when spoken, the meanings may be distinguished by different pronunciations, the words are also heteronyms. Words with the same writing and pronunciation (i.e. are both homographs and homophones) are considered homonyms. However, in a looser sense the term "homonym" may be applied to words with the same writing or pronunciation. Homograph disambiguation is critically important in speech synthesis, natural language processing and other fields. Identically written different senses of what is judged to be fundamentally the same word are called polysemes; for example, wood (substance) and wood (area covered with trees).

R E F E R E N C E S

A Fun Site for Kids - Best Homophone Poems

Example: Write a Poem of Homophones

The Girl And The Frog

Their once was a girl

Knot two pretty an knot two ugly

Just a normal ordinary girl

She was inn love with the prints,

Butt couldn’t get clothes enough two hymn

Won day she came upon a frog

The frog said, “I’m and enchanted frog,

If ewe kiss me, ewe will become beautiful.”