This morning a Facebook friend posted, "Was learning cursive really necessary?" Another Facebook friend replied, "YES it is. It changes the way your brain works, and makes you think about words differently. When the letters are connected the word is a whole. Kids can't write, they can't spell, they don't think. Is spelling counter-intuitive as well since we now have spell check?"
I chimed in with, "I wish that more people would actually use spell check."
She replied, "I wish more people actually knew how to spell. I rely on it now because my spelling is awful post accident but what I see/saw with students is appalling. And don't even get me started on homophones/homonyms."
And right then I knew what I was going to learn today. Because I could not recall what the heck homophones and homonyms were.
I learned, or probably in this case, re-learned, that homonyms are words that share the same pronunciation and the same spelling but have different meanings, such as fair (county fair) and fair (reasonable).
Homophones are words that share the same pronunciation and have different meanings, but could have the same or different spellings, such as pear (fruit) and pair (couple). So homophones that are spelled the same are also homonyms.
I'm not sure what practical purpose is served by knowing these technical differences unless, of course, you're an English teacher and need to explain them to your students. Perhaps that's why I quickly forgot them back in grade school and, undoubtedly, will quickly forget them soon after this post.
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