Homonyms

[Ryan Timothy B]

Dang, edited my above post shortly after you posted.

It's at least as East as Ottawa, all my friends their say about like that. It's no so much "A boot" as it is like "a boat" or "a bough it." More troublesome is this "Zed" nonsense; what's the first letter of the pronunciation of "Zed?" is it "Zed?" Or is it "Zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."

Totally.  I wholeheartedly believe it actually should be 'Zee' instead of 'Zed'.  It's hard for me to shake the 'Zed' from my brain since it's how I was taught, but I try to say 'Zee' as often as I can.

I guess it's similar to W (double-u), you never say double-u in a word that contains a U.  They probably wanted to mix it up a bit instead of actually having the pronunciation of that letter within a word to be the same as how the letter on it's own is pronounced.

[SSH]

If you listen to Celine Dion's Titanic song, one line sounds like "I believe that the hot dogs go on"

In Chinese, which I'm currently studying, there are things that sound like homophones to foreigners but sound completely different to the Chinese ear. Like, with the different tones, and zh and j both pronounced "j", sh and x both pronounced "sh", etc.

And in Spanish b and v are pronounced the same, which means that many homophones are not homographs.

[Ryan Timothy B]

If you listen to Celine Dion's Titanic song, one line sounds like "I believe that the hot dogs go on"

Hopefully that wasn't another Canadian joke. 
Celine is french Canadian, and we all know they don't count.  :

[Stupot]

French-Canadians speak Canadian-French... hmm

Talking of cross-linguistic homophones, how about 'oui' vs. 'wee'?
Also, in Japanese, I've recently learnt the word for kind of 'investigation' is 'chousa', whch is pronouced very much like 'Chauser', the Cantebury Tales chappy.

[Cuiki]

Also, in Japanese, I've recently learnt the word for kind of 'investigation' is 'chousa', whch is pronouced very much like 'Chauser', the Cantebury Tales chappy.

Yes, they are pronunced similar but they're not homophones (I'm refering to RP English). The word 'Chauser' ends in short schwa (ə) while 'chousa' ends in 'a' (which is, I would say, something between 'a' as in 'cup' and 'a:' in 'far'). Also, I think 'o' in 'chousa' is a bit longer, since it's a double 'o'.

It's hard to search for English + another language homophones because English has a pronunciation system totally different from many other languages (aspiration, vowel length etc.).

English itself has quite a lot of homophones.
But Japanese, on the other hand, has tones of them. For example, 'kami' means either 'hair' or 'paper' or 'God'. Consulting a dictionary, I found at least three additional meanings. (233 matches, actually, but those are mainly compounds).
EDIT: whoops, i think those aren't homophones

[SSH]

I like that in Chinese the word that means "head" is pronounced "toe".

[Gilbert]

Depends on which dialect you're after.

[Andail]

sorry to go OT (we probably have to give up finding a search enginge that lists inter-lingual homophones) but can your language produce a word that has three different meanings, covering the three wordclasses verb, noun and adjective?
The Swedish language has one such word; rå. It has the meanings raw (adjective), care or manage (verb) and fairy [as in skogsrå=female forest spirit](noun).

[SSH]

bow is (at least) two different adjectives, three different nouns and a verb. It is also a homophone of both bo and bough!

[Andail]

Pardon my ignorance, but how is bow an adjective?

[SSH]

bow legged

bow tie

bow wave

[Tuomas]

We have "vetää" which as a verb basically translates into every possible verb in our language.

To Dualnames, or who ever started this thread. If you can write it in phonetic alphabet, there should be dictionaries that translate accordinly... at least some are in progress of being done soon.

SSH: in your examples bow is merely a determiner for the substantive.

[SSH]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bow

Tuomas, having looked up the meanings of "subjective" and "determiner" in grammar, I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.

[Tuomas]

Hehe, fine, I've only got 2 years of linguistics behind me, but that's all in German. False translation there. A subjective is different than substantive, which is what I'm after here, and bow is an apposition in this phrase as a determiner and acts as an adjective, but in fact, is not an adjective even though your dictionary so says.

[Ali]

Edit: Actually one thing that I am curious about, is this how they're taught in school?  Are they actually taught to pronounce the R only when it's before a vowel?  Or is it just a losing battle between teachers and accents?

When I was 5 or 6 years old I had to attend a special class once a week for a month or two just so I could pronounce my R's, TH's, and a few others.  I was saying 'cah' instead of 'car', or 'fee-ater' instead of 'theater'.

An R is supposed to have a rolling of the tongue sound, are you guys even taught this?  Do you even get taught basic rules on how to pronounce letters as a whole?  Or are there literally different english rules for each country/area?

Yes there are many different rules!

Except they're not rules so much as guidelines. The only rule is never ask someone from Sunderland if they have a geordie accent.

No one is really taught an accent in school, you just develop one. We did have a Scottish supply teacher who told us off for not pronouncing 'r', but he was an angry, angry man so we didn't pay him any attention.

[Stupot]

bow legged

bow tie

bow lifeboat

I'm not even sure what a 'bow lifeboat is', but I think 'bow-legged' is a single, hyphenated unit.  'Bow tie' is a compound noun.  I'd say 'bow' here is a noun, even if it does kind of modify 'tie'.

[Andail]

Sorry, SSH, but those are in no way adjectives.
Tuomas and Stupot are absolutely right, so just trust us on this one

[Ali]

What about the nautical sense in the link given by SSH: "of or pertaining to the bow of a ship"? That's adjectival, right?

Incidentally, I just found an dictionary where you can hear fought and fort with an English (i.e. proper) accent. In the phonetics it indicates that the 'r' sound in the former is optional:

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/fort

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/fought

[Andail]

Ali, not more than "deck" would be adjectival when you put it before things that pertain to the deck of said ship.

Is "dog" an adjective just because it can determine "leash"?

[Questionable]

The only rule is never ask someone from Sunderland if they have a geordie accent.

Is that pronounced "Jord-ee?" If so... that is one of the MOST difficult accents in the world to understand. They all sound like people from Boston with Downs Syndrome, and a loving dollop of an British-Speak.