Discussion
What's the correct term for words that are spelled the same but mean different things depending on how they're pronounced?
For example 'tear', meaning to rip when it rhymes with 'hair' versus a droplet of water falling from the eye when it rhymes with 'ear'.
And does this phenomenon occur in other languages? For something more phonetic like Spanish I'd imagine not, but would love some Spanish examples if they exist...
@blag Classic example in German is "umfahren" which means "go over" or "go around" depending on pronunciation
@blag A propos something sideways
@ancientsounds Thanks, I think the concept I was looking for is more like 'Heteronym', which is slightly more limiting than 'Homograph'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_(linguistics)
@blag I think it's called a "homophone". There are words like that in German as well (e.g. "umfahren" can mean "to drive around" or to "run over")
@blag That’s a homograph.
@fhardwig
Following a link from that article, I think Heteronym gets even closer to what I had in mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_%28linguistics%29?wprov=sfla1
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@blag supot in Tagalog could mean bag or uncircumcised depending on emphasis, I am given to understand. Per Wiktionary, the latter definition has a visible accent mark over the o, so not sure it counts as a true homograph.