Talk:Heterography and homography

This article was nominated for deletion on 30 January 2009. The result of the discussion was keep.

[Untitled]

Cat amd cede
Gun and gin

are not pronounced the same! Am I missing something here? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.94.179.11 (talk • contribs) 22:53, 2 March 2007.

Actually the "c" and "g" rules (for cat /ˈkæt/, cede /siːd/, gun /ɡʌn/, and gin /dʒɪn/) are described in their own pages. JackPotte (talk) 14:37, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dubious

According to the article:

"In linguistics, heterography is a property of a written language, such that it lacks a 1-to-1 correspondence between the written symbols and the sounds of the spoken language."

According to every other definition that I can find, "heterography" essentially means "different spelling, same sound", which is not the same thing at all. For example, the words "desert" (arid region) and "desert" (abandon) exhibit a "lack of a 1-to-1 correspondence between the written symbols and the sounds of the spoken language", but can't be an example of heterography (as the definition in the article implies) since they are spelled the same.

The article then goes on to say:

"Its opposite is homography, which is the property of a language such that written symbols of its written form and the sounds of its spoken form have a 1-to-1 correspondence."

However, the words "desert" (arid region) and "desert" (abandon) are an example of homography, and yet they do not exhibit any such 1-to-1 correspondence. 86.140.132.115 (talk) 04:00, 21 March 2010 (UTC).[reply]

French vs. English

"French is more heterographic than English."

I see a need to reword this statement because it depends on what you mean by heterographic. French has a strong unidirectional correnspondence between spelling and pronounciation -- but not in the other direction, as the example points out. From the spelling of an unknown word you can know its correct pronunciation -- but from the pronunciation of an unknown word you can not deduct its spelling.

English, in contrast, has a weak correspondence between spelling and pronounciation in both directions. So it could also be argued that English was "more heterographic than French" because of this. --Neitram (talk) 16:21, 14 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have rewritten the section on French, incorporating the points you make above. -- Picapica (talk) 06:17, 6 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]