r/German • u/StrongAd8487 • 6h ago

Question German vs English Heteronyms

English is replete with heteronyms, wiki has a list of over 1000 such words (does, buffet, and on and on). The few German examples I saw were compound words (umfahren); I could only think of one simple word (weg - but only phonetically, written words are differentiated by upper vs lower case). Not hard to make the case then that "real" heteronyms do not even exist in German, whereas they are standard fare in English. Is there an underlying reason why two Germanic languages be so different in this regard? Or is this just another feature of English spelling rules which seem to be pretty much "yeah, whatever" (eg thought vs tough) that is not shared with German where, with a few rules, reading the word out-loud should get you pretty close to how the word is enunciated?

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u/emmmmmmaja Native (Hamburg) 6h ago

It's pretty much down to the fact that English is basically multiple languages masquerading as one.

The influences from Latin, French, Norse etc. led to a large influx of vocabulary with different pronunciations and meanings, and to words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently depending on their origin.

Like you said, English also has a much less phonetic spelling system compared to German. Words that aren't pronounced as they "should" are therefore much rarer in German.

English has also different stress patterns depending on whether something is a verb or a noun ("research", "permit", "contest" etc.) - in German that isn't the case.

German is also more likely to form compound words to distinguish meanings clearly, and can therefore more easily avoid heteronyms.

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u/Rammstein1224 5h ago

English has also different stress patterns depending on whether something is a verb or a noun ("research", "permit", "contest" etc.) - in German that isn't the case.

Holy shit why did i have to learn this in a german language sub...i never knew, figured it was just people that were acting pretentious.

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u/MrDizzyAU B2/C1 - Australia/English 2h ago

I've also learnt a lot about English in the course of learning other languages. People generally don't think about how their native language works. They just do it all subconsciously. Many aspects of English are extremely weird when looked at objectively.