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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy
Contrastive Analysis Course 2010
A contrastive analysis of Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
Instructor: Nguyễn Ngọc Vũ
Student’s Name: Lê Thị Trường An
Class: 4B07
HCMC, December, 2010
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
Abstract
They don’t look alike
They’re not spelled the same.
That’s how it is the homophone game.
Homophones, homophones!
Can you find the homophones?
Oh, I went to the ocean to see the sea.
Homophones, homophones!
Last night a knight was looking at me.
Homophones, homophones!
Can you find the homophones?
From this poem, we can figure out the definition of homophone: it means a
word that is pronounced like another word but a different meaning or spelling as
see /si:/ (with your eyes) and sea /si:/ (the ocean) in the poem. Homophone is
very common in English and it is just a part of homonymy. So, what is
homonymy? Homonymy is one of an ambiguous word, whose different senses
are far apart from each other and not obviously related to each other in any way.
This is an obvious difference between the meanings of night in mid night and
knight as a man in the middle ages. Because they are in such confusing as I
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
myself - an English learner find out, I think it is necessary for me to have a small
research on homonymy between the two languages: English and Vietnamese.
Homonymy exists in many languages, and there is an abundance of Homonyms
in English as well as in Vietnamese, especially among monosyllabic words. The
focus of this paper will be on one word and morpheme level of homonymy. In the
first part the English phenomenon will be explained in regard to its types and
some examples of homonymous lexemes will be analyzed. In the second part is
the turn of Vietnamese homonymy. The last part I will raise some problems that
can arise in written and spoken language when those homonymous lexemes are
used, and then the application of homonymy in English language teaching.
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
Homonymy in English
Briefly said homonymy id the state or quality of a given word’s having the
same spelling and the same sound or pronunciation as another word, but with a
different meaning. The words which are in the relationship of homonymy are
homonyms. It is rather difficult to classify homonymy. I just mention three main
kinds that we usually encounter: homonyms proper (perfect homonym),
homophones and homographs.
Homonyms proper or perfect homonyms are different words that are
spelled and pronounced the same way.
e.g: ball1 (n): round object used in games
ball2 (n); a gathering of people for dancing.
Let’s take tack as another example of homonyms proper:
tack1 (n): small mail
tack2 (n): saddles and bridles
tack3 (n): something inferior
tack4 (n): poor fare
Or the word issue, for example, has no fewer than ten meanings given in
the Shorter Oxford Dictionary: publication, question to discuss, result / outcome,
outgoing / out flowing, …
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
The important point is that homonyms are distinct words not different
meanings within one word. For example, Hamlet, in the play of the same name,
calls Rosenkrantz and Guildenstem recorders, because they have been sent to
record what he says and does. But he then accuses them of treating him like the
musical instrument, the recorder. In this case recorder is a perfect homonym.
We can take a look at another type of homonymy, now. Words with the
same spelling but a different pronunciation are known as homographs.
e.g:

refuse /rɪˈfjuːz/ (v): indicate unwillingness
refuse /ˈref.juːs/ (n): garbage

sow /səʊ/ (v): plant seed
sow /saʊ/ (n): an adult female pig

tear /tɪə r / (n): single drop of fluid from the eye
tear /teə r / (v): pull or come apart
The most common homograph is the noun / verb distinction with certain
words, with a consequent effect on stress and on pronunciation.
e.g: I will present1 my present2 wife with a present3.
In this sentence, the word present is a noun / a verb / an adjective with
different pronunciation and meanings.
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
present1 /ˈprez. ə nt / (n): gift
present2 /ˈprez. ə nt / (adj): now
present3 /prɪˈzent/ (v): give
Homographs should not be confused with the more common homophones.
Following are examples of homophones:
/beə/: bare (adj: uncover) and bear (n: the mammal).
/dɪə /: dear (n: a loved person) and deer (n: a kind of animal)
/ˈɒl.tə/: altar (n: raised center of worship) and alter (v: to change).
Those are homophones, words which have a different spelling but share
the same pronunciation.
In the question: Which doctor is the witch doctor? The sound complex
/wɪtʃ/ has two different spellings and meanings.
I think it is somehow ambiguous to have a clear distinction between these
kinds of homonymy. However, hope that all I have mentioned will help you have
a basic view, basic information about each types of homonymy.
Following are various types of classification for homonyms. According to
Professor A.I. Smirnitsky, he classified homonyms into two large classes: full or
absolute homonyms and partial homonyms. Absolute homonyms are unrelated in
meaning; all their forms are identical in pronunciation as well as in spelling. For
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
example: Wren (n) is a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service or another
meaning is a bird. Partial homonyms are those identical forms are grammatical
equivalent belong to the same word – class, have the same syntactic function
and occur in the same grammatical environment.
This table below describes the other type of classification:
Same sound / different
Same spelling / different
meanings
meanings
Homonyms
Homophones
Homographs
Heteronyms
Different
Different
spelling
sound
To (preposition)
to
to
Too (as well)
too
too
Two (2)
two
two
Lead (to guide)
Lead (the metal)
lead
lead
Led (guided)
led
led
lead
lead
lead
lead
Heteronyms are a type of homograph that are also spelled the same and
have different meanings, but sound different.
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
Homonymy in Vietnamese
So far you may have got the most basic information of English homonymy.
There are other types of homonymy in Vietnamese: homonymy among
morphemes for example: đại in đại diện (represent) and đại dương (big) or
Homonymy between word and phrase as bàn in bàn phím (keyboard), cái bàn
(table) and bàn bạc (discuss). However, I just want to draw your attention to two
main types: homonymy among words, homonymy between word, monosyllable
or morpheme. Homonymy among words is divided into two subclasses: same
word class, and different word class. The two words ăn (of eating) and ăn
(fitting), they are all verbs, and belong to first type. Thịt (meat) is a noun and thịt
(kill) is a verb, those are example of homonymy among different word class. Or,
đá in tảng đá (stone) and đá in đá bong (kick), one is a noun, another is a verb.
This kind of homonym is very common in Vietnamese especially homonyms
between words of different classes, they are also used in many proverbs and
sayings as in pun.
e.g1:
Hai cây cùng có một tên
Cây1 xòe mặt nước cây2 lên chiến trường
Cây này bảo vệ quê hương
Cây kia hoa nở ngát thơm mặt hồ
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
Here cây1 and cây2 are at the same word class, one is a gun, and one is a kind of
flower. Following is the example of homonymy in different word class:
e.g2:
Bà già đi chợ cầu Đông
Xem một quẻ bói lấy chồng lợi1 chăng?
Thầy bói gieo quẻ nói rằng:
Lợi2 thì có lợi3 nhưng răng chẳng còn
Lợi1 and lợi2 have the same meaning and same word class – an adjective; lợi3 is
a noun which means gums. People use homonyms too show the irony: this
woman is too old to get marriage.
e.g3: Một nghề cho chín1 còn hơn chín2 nghề. chín1 is an adjective means
professional, chín2 is a numeral.
e.g4: Con ngựa đá1 con ngựa đá2, con ngựa đá3 không đá4 con ngựa. Here đá2
and đá3 are nouns, have the same meanings: stone whereas đá1 and đá4 are
verbs which mean kick.
Another type of homonyms in Vietnamese is homonyms between words and
monosyllable or morpheme. As in the following examples:
Chị Xuân đi chợ mùa hè
Mua cá thu về chợ hãy còn đông.
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
There are four seasons just in one sentence. But Xuân is a name, thu is
mackerel – a kind of fish, đông is crowded.
Anh Hươu đi chợ Đồng Nai
Bước qua bến Nghé, ngồi nhai thịt bò
There are four animals: hươu, nai, nghé, bò. In this sentence, the post lexical
component of the two places homonymy with the name of two animals: nai and
nghé.
Cóc chết bỏ nhái mồ côi,
Chẫu ngồi chẫu khóc: chàng ơi là chàng!
Ễnh ương đánh lệnh đã vang,
Tiền đâu mà trả cho làng, ngóe ơi!
“Chàng ơi!” here is the crying of Chẫu for Cóc, but the writer want to indicate an
animal called chẫu chàng in the group of five: cóc, nhái, chẫu chàng, ễnh ương,
chóe.
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
Contrastive analysis
I may let you focus on tree main points that make English homonyms differ
from Vietnamese homonyms. English – an inflected language and Vietnamese –
an uninflected language is what we need to take into consideration. Vietnamese
words which are homonymous will be homonymous in all kinds of context. On
contradictory, two words are homonyms in this form but can not be homonymous
in another. For example: sore (painful) is a homonymy of saw (past tense of verb
to see) not in homonymous relationship with see (present tense). Because
English is an inflected language so it has changes in form to indicate different
grammatical forms, this causes the change in pronunciation. The second point is
that in Vietnamese there is no opposition between the root and affix of a word. It
means homonymy among words is the result of homonymy among morphemes
or monosyllables. Vietnamese people use this as a very humorous way of saying
when the name Hitler which is pronounced Hít - le in Vietnamese. They created
Phùng – Há ( Phùng Há is the name of a famous artist in Viet Nam) a parallel
word with Hít – le. They have separated the two morphemes of one word; Phùng
and Há are two verbs show the action of the mouth while Phùng Há is a noun – a
name of a person. The mispronunciation words of some places in Viet Nam also
contribute to wide homonymy in Vietnamese. That called dialects, for instance:
Southern Vietnamese people often pronounce che instead of tre in cây tre. So
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
che here is a homonym of che (the act of covering your head). Those are the key
points that we can differentiate Vietnamese homonymy and English homonymy.
Implication in English language teaching
Homonymy is a complicated phenomena, Vietnamese learner may find it is
ambiguous in meaning as well as in grammatical point. Let’s look at this
sentence: Hổ mang bò lên núi. The word mang and bò are ambiguous
themselves that lead the reader to two possible explanations. The first one, mang
in hổ mang (a kind of snake) is a noun and bò here is a verb so the meaning of
this sentence is hổ mang / bò lên núi. Another explanation is that mang is a verb
which means carry, so this time bò is a noun (a kind of animal). The meaning is
differing from the first one. Because homonymy is ambiguity so the learners need
to take a deep look at homonymy forms, and furthermore they need to compare
or contrast between homonymy and polysemy since both makes word and
sentence not clear.
To make it simple to remember, homonymy and polysemy are concerned
with the way words ofen have a number of different meanings, but polysemy is
one form with closely related meaning while the meanings of homonymy is not
related to each other.
e.g: The firefighters managed to save the children from the burning thirdfloor flat.
The countryside round here is terribly flat and boring.
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
These sentences illustrate what linguists all polysemy, that is the fact that many
words in English have more than one meaning.
A very large number of words in English are homographs or homophones.
If a word that you read or hear in English seems strange in its context, it may well
be because it is not being used in the sense that you are familiar with. If all we
had at our disposal to convey messages to one another were the meaning of
individual words, we could be restricted in what we could say to as many
messages as we had words in our vocabulary. But that is not the case because
we put words into sentences and combine the meanings of words into complex
messages using the syntax of the language we happen to be speaking. In their
interaction with one another in grammatical sequences, the meanings of words
undergo a number of changes. For instance, while words may be homonymous
on their own, when placed in grammatical sequences some of their sense can be
excluded. All I want to say is that context is necessary to activate the full
resources of word meaning.
Words are the basic of language, and thus the basic of communication.
Without words, it is possible to know everything about the grammatical structure
of a language, but yet to be unable to make a single meaningful utterance, so
can be fluency in reading, writing, listening and speaking as well. In the
perception of many learners, learning a language equals learning its vocabulary.
Furthermore, homonymy is a part of vocabulary, it is a need for learner to learn
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
and remember them because of their ambiguity. On our role as teachers, we
need to find an effective way to present homonymy to our students so that they
can put them in their long-term memory and recall it later. I think the best way to
present homonymy is through the situation or story, as in different situation there
is another meaning of a homonymy, when the learner read the situation or story
they encounter the homonyms, recognize it and learn it. By letting student read
the jokes first, after that teachers present the homonymy in the text with their
forms and meanings. Then, teachers can design some tasks for student practice
homonymy. These are some sample tasks used for wide-range of students.
Task 1: Choose the right word / words to fill the gaps in the sentences
below
1. to / too / two
If we go _______the beach, would you like to come _________?
2. weather / whether
I am going __________ you like it or not.
3. there / their / they’re
I shall put ________ parcels over ___________.
4. hear / here
I like to come __________ because I always __________ the latest gossip.
5. no / know
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
There is _________ paper left in the printer, or did you ____________ that
already?
6. would / wood
_____________ you like to come to the party with us?
7. through / threw
You need to go ____________ the door at the end of this corridor to get to the
canteen.
8. write / right
I must ____________ a letter to the bank.
9. check / cheque
I need to see if he has cashed the __________.
10.
road / rode / rowed
He _________ his motorbike along the ___________.
11.
piece / peace
They all had a __________ of cake.
12.
caught / court
She had to go to the __________ to prove she was innocent.
13.
allowed / aloud
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
We were only __________ to visit at certain times.
14.
site / sight
Houses were being built on this __________.
15.
paw / pour / poor
Tip up the jug and __________ lots of cream on the strawberries.
Task 2: Each underlined word rhymes with, or sounds similar to, one of the
words in brackets; choose the matching word.
1. The girl I live with knows a good pub with live music. (five / give)
2. The main house houses a collection of rare stamps. (mouse / browse)
3. It’s no use. I can’t use this gadget. (snooze / juice)
4. You sow the seeds while I feed the sow. (cow / go)
5. The violinist in the bow tie took a bow. (now / so)
6. He’s the lead singer in the group “Lead piping”. (head / deed)
7. What a row from the last house in the row! (plough / though)
8. Does he still suffer from his war wound? (found / tuned)
9. I wound the rope around the tree to strengthen it against the gale. (round /
spooned)
10.
It’s quite hard to wind in the sails in this wind. (find / tinned)
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
Task 3: Homophones and homographs are at root of many jokes inn English.
Match the first part of each these children’s jokes with the second part and
then explain the play on words involved in each.
1. What do you get if you cross a sheep and a kangaroo?
Let’s play draughts.
2. What did the south wind say to the north wind?
A drum takes a lot of beating.
3. Why did the man take his pencil to bed?
A woolly jumper.
4. Why is history the sweetest lesson?
He wanted to draw the curtains.
5. What’s the best birthday present?
Because it’s full of dates.
To sum up, homonymy is a part of vocabulary, known as a part of
communication in learning a language. It is an interesting phenomenon for the
cause of ambiguous in meanings lead into the ambiguous in grammatical
structure. I hope that this paper some how help the one who learn English
especially Vietnamese learners with the forms and some meanings I have
mentioned above. Teachers can find some advantages of this paper and help
their student with the problems of homonymy as well as create an effective
teaching method while providing and testing homonymy as well as vocabulary
integrated with the other skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
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Homonymy in English and Vietnamese
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