our blog

The amusing homophony of English 

19 January 2022

Amusing to tears

In English, due to its twisted spelling, it is not always possible to exactly identify the word pronounced. What is meant by [raɪt]—right, rite, wright, write? Pronounced similarly and written differently, these words are called homophones.

Lots of jokes are based on homophony. For instance, May 4 is celebrated as the so-called Star Wars Day because the catchphrase of this saga May the Force be with you can be also spelled as May the fourth be with you (May the fourth, May 4).

Another homophonic joke—Eye Halve a Spelling Chequer. The words in this poem are written as gibberish, but they suddenly turn into meaningful text once you start pronouncing them without thinking. The first strophe:

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

Another linguistic joke on a similar topic, on irregular stresses in English—the De Chaos poem.

Recommended content

How to get rid of the “We found problems with some of the filenames in this package and we will attempt to fix them” error in Trados Studio
A Trados Studio error that occurs in a regular situation This Trados Studio error occurs when you try importing a return package from the translator: We found problems with some of the filenames in this package and we will attempt to fix them. We recommend that you verify the filenames after the import is done. […]
Knowledge Hub

How to watch lots of webinars and stay sane
Chaotic notes from someone who watches lots of webinars * * * Increasing playback speed is a life-saving action. YouTube provides two magical key combinations: SHIFT + → (speed up by 25%) і SHIFT + ← (slow down by 25%). You can speed up a video a maximum of 2 times and slow it down up to 4 times. You tend […]
Knowledge Hub

Claude Émile Jean-Baptiste Litre
An interesting and little-known story about the liter symbol The preamble. There is a general rule: if a unit of measurement is named after a person, its symbol must be capitalized. Example: there was once a lord Kelvin, named William Thomson. The unit of temperature measurement was named after him, kelvin. It is a common […]
Knowledge Hub

How to get rid of the “Failed to save target content: The illustration <…> was moved between paragraphs” error in Trados Studio
Sometimes it is easier to remove an error than to find its reason Here is what we’ve got this time: Failed to save target content: The illustration <…> was moved between paragraphs. The error occurs when you try generating a “clean” translated document. The message suggests that the document has undergone either source editing or […]
Knowledge Hub

Everybody paints!
About neural art: DALL-E, Midjourney, Starryai, etc. Neural networks, such as DALL-E, which generate impossible realistic images with a text description have brought dramatic distress among artists, especially illustrators and graphic designers. Why learn to paint if the computer can paint more, better, and more quickly? Today, it is hard to say what kind of future […]
Knowledge Hub