#5: Tearing Me Up
This person is complaining about how “tear” and “tier” sound the same but mean completely different things. It makes no sense to them because there are two different pronunciations for “tear” and they both have different meanings. Make it make sense! Someone went on to comment on this post saying they were glad English was their first language because learning it as a second language would be an absolutely headache.
Whether they knew it or not, this person was giving an example of a homophone and a heteronym. A homophone (tear and tier) is when two words sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. A heteronym (tear and tear) is when two words are spelled the same but have different pronunciations and different meetings. Hey, we didn’t make up the rules, we just follow them.