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I'm Just Really Mad About Heteronyms…

2019-11-22 · explainer · Hank · 3:53 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities · mode: Explainer · tags: civic or action cta

Hank, newly aware that 'desert' has four meanings and two pronunciations (desert island, just deserts), sorts out homophones, homographs, homonyms and heterographs, and fumes that words spelled alike but sounding different are called heteronyms rather than heterophones; he then asks viewers to fill out a form saying where the brothers should tour.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — 'Desert island' and the four meanings and two pronunciations of 'desert'

  • ★★ Hank says a desert island is not an island that is a desert: it can be lush, watered and covered with big rainforest trees. — 00:00:06
  • ★★ Hank says 'desert' in 'desert island' is an adjective meaning uninhabited or deserted, one he has used his whole life without knowing it existed. — 00:00:23
  • ★★★ Hank says the word spelled D-E-S-E-R-T has four definitions and two pronunciations: a dry place, uninhabited, to abandon, and the thing you deserve. — 00:00:32

00:00:55 — 'Just deserts' and dessert with the extra S

  • ★★ Hank explains that in 'you got your just deserts', 'just' means fair and 'deserts' means the things you deserve, not an after-dinner treat. — 00:00:59
  • ★ Hank argues the 'just' in the idiom is redundant, since every desert is by definition what you deserve. (playful) — 00:01:14

00:01:39 — Homophones, homographs, homonyms, heterographs, and why heteronyms aren't called heterophones

  • ★★ Hank explains the building blocks of the terms: -phone for how words sound, -graph for how they are written, hetero- for different and homo- for same. — 00:02:05
  • ★★ Hank defines a homophone as a word that sounds the same as another but has a different meaning, and a homograph as one that looks the same but has a different meaning. — 00:02:19
  • ★★ Hank says a homonym has the same pronunciation and spelling but a different meaning, like desert (sand) and desert (abandoned), so every homonym is also a homophone and a homograph. — 00:02:25
  • ★★ Hank says words like desert (to abandon) and dessert sound the same but are spelled differently, making them homophones that are also heterographs. — 00:02:44
  • ★★ Hank says words spelled the same but pronounced differently, like desert (sand) and desert (to abandon), are heterophones, yet they are called heteronyms. — 00:02:57
  • ★★★ Hank fumes that words spelled alike but sounding different are not called heterophones, the name the system of prefixes and suffixes would give them. (playful) — 00:03:14
  • ★ Hank says figuring all this out took half an hour of his life. (playful) — 00:03:14

00:03:23 — The broken tour pin map and the form asking where to tour next

  • ★★ Hank says the brothers recently put up a map where viewers could pin where they live for their tour planning, but it broke, so the pins are no longer useful data. — 00:03:23
  • ★★★ Hank asks viewers to fill out the form linked in the description to tell the brothers where to come when they next go on tour. — 00:03:38

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says it's neat to have so many words for words, but you'd think linguists in charge would do a better job. (playful) — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Hank opens with the discovery that sets off his rant about 'desert'. — 00:00:06

    “A desert island is not a desert island.”

  • Hank dissects the idiom 'just deserts' and finds half of it pointless. — 00:01:14

    “So the “just” part of this idiom is completely irrelevant because every desert is something that is just,”

  • After building the whole homo/hetero, phone/graph system, Hank seethes at the name it gives words spelled alike but sounding different. — 00:03:14

    “WHY AREN’T THEY CALLED HETEROPHONES?”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: heteronym

Also: English language · homograph · homonym · homophone

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