Soundalikes: brake and break - present and past verbs, future tense

Brake now or you'll break it.

Brake - noun
Examples: use the brakes, stop a car with the foot brake, park using the hand brake break - verb
present tense I break bread with them, you break a lot of things, He/sh/it breaks, we break for tea at 4 pm. Regular events / conditions: Fine china breaks easily. break - noun; examples: we take a break at 11.30, we have tea breaks
Past simple past broke (he broke it, she broke it, they broke it) Passive (verb to break) It is broken! Compound Past I have broken the rules several times you have broken it she/he/it has broken it Distant past (day before yesterday, event preceding another past event) I dropped it and broke it yesterday but it had already been broken in several places I had broken it last weekend but didn't tell them until yesterday. Quick reminder: I break (present or regular action), I shall break (future), I WILL break (future determined and insistent - implying don't you or anybody try to stop me. Will is often used by mistake because second person is you will and many people are not taught and do not teach themselves the fine distinctions you can make with traditional use of English tenses. Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor.

Soundalikes: Hole and whole; raise and rise, taught and taut, wet and whet

Soundalikes are a constant source and sauce, of confusion and amusement.

hole - gap in cloth, earth, paper or any other substance, often round, or irregular - when long and thin it would be called a slit in cloth or a crevice in the ground

raise - to grow plants; in the USA to bring up children - Americans would say, "I was raised in New York,"; the British would say, "I grew up in London; I was educated in Scotland; I was brought up by my grandmother; African saying: It takes a village to raise a child
raze - cut, as you do with a razor and a razor blade

taught - past tense of teach
taut - tight

Wet - moist, opposite of dry
Whet - used in the phrase whet your appetite, to arouse

whole - entire, used in the phrase the whole is more than the sum of the parts

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, language teacher and tutor.

Soundalikes - who knows about the rose?

knows - present tense of verb to know, third person: I know, you know, he knows, she knows, it knows, we know, you (all -plural) know, they know
nose - part you breathe through in the centre of your face

rose - flower
rose - past tense of rise
rows - lines of similar objects

rouse - to wake from deep sleep
rows - angry arguments

You can make up an amusing sentence or rhyme:

The rows or roses, planted in rows
Climbing where, nobody knows
Want to find them?
Follow your nose.

Angela Lansbury, English teacher

Soundalikes or Homophones: few; phew; peak; peek; war, wore, ware, wary, where

I've just been learning Chinese where the word ma can be pronounced in five ways with different meanings. The same applies to many English words.

few - opposite of many (but see my post under the grammar blog on few and a few)
phew - exclamation of surprise, often relief
peek - sneaky look, either quick or with half closed eyes or through a slit
peak - top of a mountain, often pointed
war - country declares war, so every national and citizen is obliged to fight against those of another country, used metaphorically for a serious battle
wore - past tense of wear
wear - to put clothes or jewellery or hats on your body
where - place where, question where?
ware - be aware, beware - to be alert, watch out for, and notice, or be prepared for, especially danger (beware of the dog - notice often seen on gates or doors)
wary - adjective, describing a person or object - he was wary of ...  the child / dog was wary of strangers
warily - adverb - a verb is a doing word, an adverbs adds - warily: walk / proceed warily (eg we stepped warily from one stepping stone to the next along the stream which was quickly turning into a raging river
weir - barrier for water - the water often flows over, through and under
we're - short form or contraction for we are
whore - pronounced h o r e as in horse, old-fashioned word for prostitute or woman of loose morals who sleeps with anybody either for money or fun. Beware of saying my whores (pronounced hors) when you mean my horse. When you say horse you hiss at the end of the word, like a snake. Whores is like h o r z, ending like a bumble bee sound. I sat through a speech in Singapore when a man talked about his h o r e s. I had been daydreaming for a moment and came back to the speech. Something about the English liking whores? Was he talking about short skirts or morals? Surely not? Was it humorous speech? He continued. The hobby of the English - the whore's tail, feeding the whores, the expense of the whores, reading about whores, eating the whores, liking pets, no whores in Singapore, - whores racing; eventually I realised that it was a horse.
hors d'ouvre - the french drop the last letter of many words. The h at the start is silent. Hors is pronounced or.

Angela Lansbury, BA Hons, ACG, CL, author and English teacher and tutor at home and on Skype.

Soundalikes or homophones of the day (EFL AND ESL - what's the difference?)

EFL English as a Foreign Language
ESL English as a Second Language
fort - fortified or strongly built defence building, often with walls and lookout towers, linked words fortress, fortified (adjective), fortify (verb)
fought - past tense of fight (not to be confused with thought, which is a noun and also the past tense of think, and fraught - mixed in with or stressed, for example, this scheme is fraught with problems
muscat - grape variety
musket - gun (old fashioned rifle you had to charge with a compressing plunger which used a ball to push the gunpowder down the barrel, dangerous - even to to people using them)
road - paved or tarmac wide path for vehicles, cars, lorries (US trucks)
rode - past tense of ride (eg Yesterday I rode in his car. In the old days people rode to the fair on horseback. On the remote islands they rode donkeys.)

Angela Lansbury teaches English, and English as a Second Language (ESL) and EFL (English for Foreigners)  as a home tutor and school workshop leader / assistant.

What is the difference between EFL and ESL? EFL you start from scratch, teaching tenses and simple vocabulary at elementary level. Often to people passing exams. ESL your pupils already speak elementary English but often have mistakes brought in from speaking another first language. You have to correct mispronunciations, deal with pigeon English and Singlish where the same words are used by the pupil and their family and friends and everybody around them in a different way. ESL users often need conversation rather than written work. They need help correcting job applications.

You usually teach EFL entirely in the language you are teaching, such as English. In the Berlitz method, and from the Earworms discs, the pupil learns to speak by hearing the words repeated.

ESL, however, is often required by people who speak fluently but have poor pronunciation. Adults in offices need technical vocabulary for their work. Those in service industries need polite forms for dealing with customers (for example as a hotel receptionist). I would be teaching them to say, 'May I help you?, rather than phrases which sound rude, aggressive, demanding, threatening, such as a correct direct translation from (Mandarin) Chinese, 'You want to buy or not?'

Predictive text : glue and gluh

I typed in gluh wein which I presume is German, meaning a warm wine. In English you might say a grog, hot toddy, hot punch, mulled wine. Predictive text suggested glue win. If you are fast enough you can click on the X after the suggested word to stop that word replacing the one you have typed.

Glue - substance which sticks one object to another (can be used metaphorically - eg I was glued to his words)
Glühwein - literally glow wine, warm wine
gluh
wein German for wine
wine - alcoholic drink made from grapes
win verb, or noun, to win, opposite of lose a competition


Angela Lansbury, writer, teacher, author, speaker.

Soundalikes: hose and hoes, who knows the no's?

Who knows the difference between hose and hose?

hoes, hose - agricultural implement, stockings
Knows, no's, noes, nose - verb, number or plural of no, plural of no votes, part of face
loos, lose - slang for toilet, verb for person losing items which are lost
rose, rows - garden flower, planted in neat lines or rows
toes, tows - ten toes on your two feet, who tows the boat along?
throes, throws - in the throes, or middle twists of torment,  present tense, third person, throwing a ball

Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor, workshop leaders, speech coach. Author and speaker.

Soundalikes from beat to weight

beat and beet
feet - two feet, hopefully not two left feet (meaning one who cannot dance)
fête - festival
greet and great and grate
Meat and meet
nay and neigh
rain and reign
way and weigh
wait and weight

Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor.

Soundalikes and capital letters

This china is from China and the turkey from Turkey - the capital letters make

Spelling and punctuation make all the difference to our understanding. Words in dictionaries are listed with small letters unless they always appear with capitals because this makes a difference to the sense, the meaning.

bare, bear
china, China (The small letter indicates a kind of pottery whilst the latter is a proper name for a Country.)
beer, bier
pare, pear
pier, peer
turkey, Turkey (The small initial letter is for the bird whilst the capital letter is for the country.
weir, we're

In English capital letters generally show a person or a city or a country. Ordinary nouns referring to groups of items are shown by small letters. However, in German all nouns have capital letters.

Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor. 

Soundalikes

They pop up everywhere, soundalikes. Here are some more:

bare, bear.
beer, bier.
dear, deer.
fir, fur.
hear, here.
her, Hur.
hole, whole.
war, wore.
we're, weir.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, English teacher, author, speaker.