Note (return) — LIST OF HOMOPHONES

Otto Jespersen12 seems to think that the inconvenience of homophones is so great that a language will naturally evolve some phonetic habit to guard itself against them, although it would otherwise neglect such distinction. I wish that this admirable instinct were more evident in English. He writes thus of the lists of words which he gives 'to show what pairs of homonyms [homophones] would be created if distinctions were abolished that are now maintained: they [the lists] thus demonstrate the force of resistance opposed to some of the sound-changes which one might imagine as happening in the future. A language can tolerate only a certain number of ambiguities arising from words of the same sound having different significations, and therefore the extent to which a language has utilized some phonetic distinction to keep words apart, has some influence in determining the direction of its sound-changes. In French, and still more in English, it is easy to enumerate long lists of pairs of words differing from each other only by the presence or absence of voice in the last sound; therefore final b and p, d and t, g and k, are kept rigidly apart; in German, on the other hand, there are very few such pairs, and thus nothing counterbalances the natural tendency to unvoice final consonants.'