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?'