Exercise Homophones
The following material is an adapted form of material created by student participants of the project e-Learning Resources for Semantics (e-LRS).
Involved participants: Anna, Katarzyna, Verena, Ulrike
Homophones
<quiz display=simple>
{Which of the following pairs are homophones? Click on the checkboxes to check your answers and remember, multiple choice question means that there can be more than one right answer.
|type="[]"}
+ bight (curve in a coastline) - byte (unit of memory size)
|| As you can hear by clicking on bight, it sounds exactly as byte. Therefore, these two words are homophones but obviously no homographs.
- bear (animal) – beer (alcoholic drink)
|| Unfortunately, your answer is incorrect. These two are neither homophones nor homographes.
By clicking on bear, you can easily spot the differences to beer. Try again, you can do it!
+ haw (fruit)- hoar (venerable)
|| As you can hear by clicking on haw, it sounds exactly as hoar. Therefore, these two words are truly homophones but obviously no homographs. How smart you are!
+ fawn (colour) – fawn (little roe deer)
|| As you can hear by clicking on fawn brown, it sounds exactly as the animal fawn. Therefore, these two words are homophones AND also homographs as their writing is identical. Great work!
- read (present tense) - read (past tense)
|| Click on read and you can easily spot the differences to the read in this example. Therefore, these two are only homographs, no homophones. Come on, you can find it!
- heal (to cure) - he’ll (short form of he will)
|| heal and he'll do not sound the same. Therefore, these two are neither homographs nor homophones. Next choice, think wisely!
{Now it's getting a bit hairier. Same question but the answers are not that easy any more...
|type="[]"}
+ personal pronoun - part of your face
|| Of yourse, the personal pronoun was I and you guessed correctly, we were also looking for the human eye. As you can hear by clicking on I, it sounds exactly as eye. Therefore, these two words are homophones but obviously no homographs.
- to bend down - ribbon
|| Bow, the synonym for ribbon, does not sound like to bow, the word we were looking for. Therefore, your answer is wrong as these two are only homographs, no homophones.
- to clean very intensely - someone from Poland
|| A Polish person does not sound like someone who passionately cleans shoes until they flash again. By clicking on to polish, you can easily spot the difference to Polish. You can easily understand now, why those two are only homographs, not homophones, right?
+ past tense of 'to eat' – one-digit number
|| The past tense of to eat is ate and the one-digit number lies between seven and nine. As you can hear by clicking on this example (look like the cat who ate the canary), the past tense form sounds exactly as eight. Therefore, these two words are homophones but no homographs because their writing is not the same. Try again!
+ sound of a dog – skin of a tree
|| A dog always barks if he's not asleep and the skin of a tree is named the very same, bark. As you can hear by clicking on bark bettle and His bark is worse than his bite, you will understand that both words sound exactly the same. Therefore, they are homophones AND homographs as also their wirting is identical.
- nearby - to shut
|| Of course, the two instantiations were pointing to the same word, close, but in spite of the identical writing, they are not the same. By clicking on to close, you can easily spot the difference to close, as in nearby. Therefore, these two words are only homographs, but no homophones.