Per Reporter's thread recently, as an ESL student, English homonyms

[theking]

..was one of the hardest part of the English language to grasp for me early on..

True story:

I was in the playground during recess and over heard a teacher said, that kid hurt his calf and I remembered looking all over for a baby cow, not knowing that the word, calf also means a part of the human leg..

[VillainousHero]

Nah...I still get the hmong talk words messed up.  Don't ask for translation.  It's all wrong. 

Oh my yellow ear.

[DuMa]

viet translation

nha cau = toilet
cau = bridge

So when my dad and my uncle be talking about driving over a bridge on highway so and so, my young and growing make believe mind would picture a car driving on the rim of a tiolet bowl. 

another one.

the word:
duong = street
duong - sugar

so my fobby uncle car had broken down and he was trying to translate to a cop that his car died on the street = He said in english traslation "my car died on the sugar"

 

[theking]

Nah...I still get the hmong talk words messed up.  Don't ask for translation.  It's all wrong. 

Oh my yellow ear.

Yep, and we've adopted quite a few words from other groups where ever we ended up especially Laotian words..

[theking]

viet translation

nha cau = toilet
cau = bridge

So when my dad and my uncle be talking about driving over a bridge on highway so and so, my young and growing make believe mind would picture a car driving on the rim of a tiolet bowl. 

another one.

the word:
duong = street
duong - sugar

so my fobby uncle car had broken down and he was trying to translate to a cop that his car died on the street = He said in english traslation "my car died on the sugar"

Just imagine a foreigner trying to learn the language and those confusions play a factor..

[theking]

Even the Hmong language have some homonyms...for examples:

1. Liab (red color) versus Liab (monkey)
2. Txiv (dad) versus Txiv (fruit)

[theking]

Here are some other homonyms that I had trouble with while learning English:

- Stool
- Book
- Bat
- Die
- Lie
- Pen
- Address
- Air
- Match
- Mean
- Rose
- Tire
- Right
- Fly
- Park
- Saw
- Ruler

[theking]

OMG, the word, "bad" really threw me off when I was learn about heroes and villains in comic books and such..

When I hear other kids described heroes like Superman, Hulk, Spider-man, Batman, etc., as "bad", it confused the heck out of me until I learned that the word "bad" is considered good in the slang language...

Even though it really only has one meaning, it could have two depending on the context and/or language...

[Reporter]

Our first Hmong Minnesota attorney, Chris Thao, explained why English is hard, too. He said a Hmong family just arrived at the airport and their American sponsor--the man of the house--picked them up. On the way home, he kept pointing to things and teaching the family some English words.

A mammal of the Cervidae family rushed across the road right in front of them. The driver managed to avoid hitting it but he pointed to it as it was running away and said "deer."

The family repeated the word.

When they got home, the sponsor's wife came to the driveway to greet them. "Oh, you're back. That's so nice, dear!"

Just imagine how wide the family members' jaws were dropping...

[theking]

Our first Hmong Minnesota attorney, Chris Thao, explained why English is hard, too. He said a Hmong family just arrived at the airport and their American sponsor--the man of the house--picked them up. On the way home, he kept pointing to things and teaching the family some English words.

A mammal of the Cervidae family rushed across the road right in front of them. The driver managed to avoid hitting it but he pointed to it as it was running away and said "deer."

The family repeated the word.

When they got home, the sponsor's wife came to the driveway to greet them. "Oh, you're back. That's so nice, dear!"

Just imagine how wide the family members' jaws were dropping...

Yeah, homophones like the homograph examples I've been pointing out are under the homonym umbrella. The main difference is homophones such as "deer" and "dear", here and hear, red and read, sun and son, tail and tale, steal and steel...etc., sound the same but spelled differently so it's a little easier for me when there are visuals of the word(s)...

With homographs, it's pretty much all about context since it's spelled exactly the same..