256 language/english/pronunciation/oronym.p
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This article is from the Puzzles FAQ, by Chris Cole chris@questrel.questrel.com and Matthew Daly mwdaly@pobox.com with numerous contributions by others.
256 language/english/pronunciation/oronym.p
List some oronyms (phrases or sentences that can be read in two ways
with the same sound).
language/english/pronunciation/oronym.s
Phrases:
a name an aim
a nice man an ice man
a notion an ocean
append up end
bang cat bank at
be quiet Beek Wyatt
bean ice be nice
bee feeder beef eater
beer drips beard rips
buys ink buy zinc
catch it cat shit
catch ooze cat chews
Cato Kay toe
damn pegs damp eggs
field red feel dread
forced air four stair
fork reeps four creeps
form ate four mate
freed Annie free Danny
grade A gray day
grasp rice grass price
great ape grey tape
her butter herb utter
hiatus Hy ate us
homemaker hoe-maker
I scream ice cream
I stink iced ink
it sprays it's praise
it swings its wings
keep sticking keeps ticking
known ocean no notion
lawn chair launch air
may cough make off
new Deal nude eel
new direction nude erection
night rate nitrate
pawn shop paunch op
peace talks pea stalks
pinch air pin chair
play taught plate ought
plum pie plump eye
scar face scarf ace
seal eyeing see lying
see Mabel seem able
see the meat see them eat
seize ooze see zoos
sick squid six quid
slide rule sly drool
standards-based standard-spaced
stay dill stayed ill
that's tough that stuff
the suns rays meet the sons raise meat
thing call think all
tour an two ran
tulips two lips
twenty six ones twenty sick swans
we'll own we loan
well done other weld another
white shoes why choose
yelp at yell Pat
your crimes York rhymes
youth read you thread
Sentences:
A politician's fate often hangs in a [delicate / delegate] balance.
Any [grey day/grade A] would be bad news for one professor I know.
Are you aware of the words you have [just uttered / just stuttered]?
He would kill Hamlet for [that reason / that treason].
How did you do in the [contest / Kant test]?
I don't know how [mature/much your] people enjoy such a show.
I have [known oceans/no notions] that you yourself couldn't imagine.
I like [sadder day/ Saturday].
If you listen you can hear the [night rain / night train].
I'm taking [a nice / an ice] cold shower.
Oh, no! [This guy/The sky] is falling!
Reading in the library is sometimes [allowed / aloud].
[Some others / Some mothers] I've seen...
That reflects the [secretariat's sphere / secretariat's fear] of competence.
That's the [biggest hurdle / biggest turtle] I've ever seen!
The [stuffy nose / stuff he knows] can lead to problems.
Where is the [spice center / spy center]?
[White shoes: / Why choose] the trademark of Pat Boone[./?]
You'd be surprised to see a [mint spy / mince pie] in your bank.
See also:
the archive entry "telegrams"
References:
Barry, W J, 1981, Internal Juncture and Speech Communication,
Arbeitsberichte. Institut fu"r Phonetik. University of Kiel. Vol 16.
Brandreth, Giles, _The Joy of Lex_, 1980, New York: William Morrow and Co.,
pp. 58-59, who coined the word "oronym"
Cutler & Butterfield, Rhythmic Cues to Speech Segmentation. Evidence
from juncture misperception, 1992, Journal of Memory and Language, Vol
31(2) 218-236 Provides materials in context frames where the
alternative segmentations lead to one Vs two word parsings: in furs Vs
infers.
Grice, Martine and Hazan, Valerie, 1989, The assessment of synthetic
speech intelligibility using semantically unpredictable sentences,
Speech, Hearing and Language, Work in Progress, University College
London. The inferior quality of the synthetic speech often caused more
than one type of error at once (bright eye -> dry tie).
Hoard, James E., `Juncture and syllable structure', Phonetica 15,
1966, 96-109
Hockett, Charles F. Hockett, _A Course in Modern Linguistics_, New York:
Macmillan, 1958, 54-61
Lehiste, Ilse. 1960. An acoustic-phonetic study of internal open
juncture. Phonetica 5 (supplement). pp. 5-54.
Nakatani L. H. & Dukes, K.D., 1977, Locus of Segmental Cues to Word
Juncture, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol 62, pp
714-719 and
Price P, Ostendorf M, Shattuck-Huffnagel S & Fong C (1991) "The use of
prosody in syntactic disambibuation" JASA 90 (6) pp2956-2970. It has
some good examples,
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