Homonyms in Russian – Words That Sound Alike

Homonyms in Russian

In linguistics, homonyms, broadly defined, are words which sound alike or are spelled alike, but have different meanings. (Wikipedia, Homonyms)

The term homonym comes from the Greek words Homos “identical” and Onyma “name”).

In Russian language, like in many other languages, there are words that sound the same but mean different things.

There are complete and incomplete homonyms in Russian.

Complete homonyms

Such words belong to one part of speech (usually, nouns), they coincide in spelling and in pronunciation but have different lexical meanings.

For example очки (glasses; points): носить очки (to wear glasses) – набирать очки (to collect points in a game).

Incomplete homonyms

There are 3 kinds of incomplete homonyms in Russian language.

Let’s look at each one of them.

Homographs – A type of homonyms in Russian

1️⃣ Homographs are words with the same spelling but different in pronunciation and meaning: зáмок (a castle) – замóк (a lock)

Homophones – Another type of homonyms in Russian

2️⃣ Homophones are words with the same pronunciation but different in spelling and in meaning: плод (a fruit) – плот (a raft)

Homoforms – One more type of homonyms in Russian

3️⃣ Homoforms are words with the same pronunciation and spelling for only some forms of words: печь / an oven (noun) – печь / to bake (verb) BUT when you conjugate them, they will differ in spelling.

Let’s look at the word on the picture óтруби (oat bran) и отруби́ (chop it off!) – these are homoforms. These 2 words have 1 common root – РУБ-ИТЬ (to chop)

🙂

What other examples of homonyms do you know? Write in the comments below!

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