Heteronyms with definitions English In some of these cases,
American and British English pronunciations differ. One systematic case appears in the
stress pattern of some deverbal nouns. Many of these words have the same origin, and similar meanings, and are essentially the same word. True heteronyms require the two words to be completely unrelated, which is a rare occurrence. For a longer list, see
wikt:Category:English heteronyms. }
French In French, most heteronyms result from certain endings being pronounced differently in verbs and nouns. In particular,
-ent as a third person plural verb ending is silent while as an adjective ending, it is pronounced . }
Modern Greek Modern Greek spelling is largely unambiguous, but there are a few cases where a word has distinct learned and vernacular meaning and pronunciation, despite having the same root, and where is pronounced vs. ; Some of these distinctions are being neutralized in modern speech. }
Italian Italian spelling is largely unambiguous, althouɡh there are some exceptions: •
open and
closed and ( and ) are not distinguished; • the voiced and unvoiced pronunciations of and ( and ) are not distinguished; • stress, which is usually but not always on the
penult, is not marked except when it is on the final syllable; • in some cases,
digraphs and
trigraphs like (), (), (), () are pronounced using the values of their component letters; • and may have a vocalic () or a consonantal () value. When stress is on the final, the vowel is written with an accent:
mori 'mulberries' and
morì 'he/she died'. Some monosyllabic words are also differentiated with an accent:
e 'and' and
è 'he/she is'. These cases are not heteronyms. Some common cases: }
Dutch Dutch has heteronyms which vary in stress position, known as
klemtoonhomogramen 'stress homograms', such as
appel: 'apple'
vs. 'appeal' (formerly written
appèl). Other examples include
beamen,
bedelen,
hockeyster,
kantelen,
misdadiger,
overweg,
verspringen,
verwerpen. The word
plant is generally pronounced , but may be pronounced in the sense 'he/she plans'.
German German has
few heteronyms, for example: • Some vary in stress position:
umfahren 'to knock down' vs.
umfahren 'to bypass';
übersetzen 'to translate' vs.
übersetzen 'to traverse';
Spiegelei 'fried egg' vs.
Spiegelei 'mirroring'. • Some are compounded differently:
Staubecken as
Stau-becken vs.
Staub-Ecken or
Wachstube as 'Wach-stube' vs. 'Wachs-tube'; etc. • Several are borrowings:
modern 'to molder' (derived from
Moder) vs.
modern 'modern' (borrowed from French) or
Montage 'Mondays' vs.
Montaĝe 'mounting, installing, assembling' (the latter borrowed from French). == See also ==