Reduce your Accent: homophones

Teach Me how to avoid misunderstandings in conversation

Part I: Sometimes Misunderstandings just Happen

Listen to this dialogue between a doctor and his wife. What led to the misunderstanding?

W: You look upset, what's wrong? How was your day at work?

D: Awful. I lost my patience today all because of an absent-minded nurse.

W: Oh my God. What happened exactly?

D: Well, Jessica, this newcomer nurse, mixed the files of the medical records of three of my patients. That almost drove me mad.. I can't stop thinking about it.

W: My goodness! This is dreadful. What is going to happen now? Is the hospital going to fire her or sue her?

D: No, that's the most irritating bit of the story. They decided to just give her a written warning and let her get away with it this time.

W: That's unheard of! Her mistake cost the lives of three patients, caused irreparable damage to the reputation of the hospital.. and she will not face any consequences?

D: Huh? Cost the lives..? I can't follow you. What do you mean?

W: Well, three people died, didn't they? You said you lost your patients because of her.

D: Oh no, you got it all wrong. The patients are very much alive, thankfully I picked up on her mistake relatively early but that was when I lost my patience.. you know, I had steam coming out of my ears and started shouting at her and lecturing her in front of everybody.. I completely lost my temper.

Answer

Although both the doctor and his wife talk in error-free English, a misunderstanding still takes place and that's because the words patience and patients are homophones (i.e. are pronounced the same, Lesson 01).

When the doctor's wife says "her mistake cost the lives of the patients", he begins to suspect that at some point the communication went wrong and that she understood patients, rather than patience, so he corrects the misunderstanding.

Comic illustrated by Pablo Stanley

Part II: Clarifying questions

One way to avoid misunderstandings is by asking the other speaker questions. Check out the following questions and use them whenever you are unsure about something and need help or clarification.

1) Sorry, I don't understand.

By using this little phrase you make it clear to your speaker that you find yourself unsure as to what the speaker says or means. By the way, I should stress that there is absolutely no shame in saying directly that you don't understand something (meanings, instructions, pronunciation, accent, etc).

2) Could you speak more slowly, please?

Case 1: You need to take down some notes.
Case 2: The other speaker just talks very fast making it hard for you to follow them.

Whatever the case, you kindly request them to slow down so as to ease your communication.

3) Could you repeat that, please?

You politely ask them to say something again.

4) How do you spell that?

You ask the other speaker to name in order the letters constituting a word or name.

e.g. -How do you spell your name, Richard?
       -It's R-I-C-H-A-R-D.

5) How do you pronounce that?

You ask the other speaker to say a word or name correctly.

e.g. - How do you pronounce the doctor's name?
   -It's Waysworth, Dr. /weɪswɜːθ/.

Quick Note

Before I start off with the first lesson, I would like to say that one of my goals is to make all of the material provided on this blog as short and straight-forward as possible by giving simple explanations and avoiding the use of difficult terms and related jargon.

Teach Me the basics of homophones, consonants and vowels

English is Not a Phonetic Language

Phonetic languages are languages in which there is, for the most part, a direct relationship between the spelling and the sound. Namely, words are spelled they way they sound. In a phonetic language, as soon as you see a word you immediately know how to pronounce it (correctly, that is).

English is a non-phonetic language, which means that we don't pronounce words the same way they are spelled.

In English, two words can have the same spelling but different pronuciation.

She is the main suspect in her husband's murder.
The police suspect him of drug dealing.

In the 1st sentence, the word suspect must be stressed on the first syllable, because it is a noun here. In the 2nd sentence, the stress falls on the second syllable, because in this case suspect is used as a verb.

The opposite is possible, too. Two words can differ in spelling but be pronounced the same.

I want to buy this T-shirt.
See you on Monday. Bye!

Homophones

Buy and bye are called homophones. Homophones are words that sound exactly the same, but differ in meaning and most of the times in spelling too.

I said "most of the times" because, for example, rose (the flower) and rose (the past tense of "rise") are homophones that have the same spelling. But in most homophones the spelling is different, as in the following word pairs:

buy - bye
weigh - way
two - too
sun - son
piece - peace
meat - meet
week - weak

Consonants and Vowels

In speech, words are made of sounds. There are consonant sounds (C) and vowel sounds (V). For instance, cat has three sounds (consonant-vowel-consonant; CVC for short). However, the number of sounds in a word isn't always the same as the number of letters. For example:

In writing, the word night has five letters but its pronounciation consists of only three sounds (first a consonant, then a vowel sound and finally another consonant sound; /naɪt/ written in phonemic symbols).