Well hello and welcome to this English lesson about
homophones. Homophones if you weren't aware are words that
have different spellings but they sound the same. If you
look at the word homophones it has the word phone at the end.
Which is probably I'd I'm just going to guess here. It's
probably related to a word in another language that means
sound. So a homophones then is a set of words that are spelled
differently but they sound the same. You'll probably be able
to guess maybe what the first set will be once I get the lesson
started but I hope you enjoy this lesson. It can be a little
bit tricky sometimes. In English sometimes we spell
words the same and then say them differently. Sometimes we
spell them differently and then we say them with the same
pronunciation. So this lesson will focus on that second set.
Homophones again words that are spelled differently. But they
sound the same but they also have different meanings. So I
will try to explain them as best as I possibly can in this
English lesson. So hair and hare. Again homophones are
pronounced the same way but spelled differently. You can
see that I have hair on my head. In fact I think it's time
for me to get a haircut. Uh and I should probably trim my beard
and mustache a bit too. I noticed that this morning. Um
but yes this is hair. This little animal here is also a
hare. Rabbits and hares are slightly different but they
look the same. They're an animal that jumps and hops and
has really big ears. But you can tell that both words are
pronounced the same. I have hair on my head. Sometimes when
I'm out for a hike I might see a hare. So again same
pronunciation but of course very different meanings. Plane
and plain. So if you go on a trip you go on a plane you get
a ticket to go on a plane. Uh when you're on the plane the
pilot might say prepare for take off. Is that what they
say? Uh please fasten your seatbelt. I haven't been on a
plane for a number of years. So I don't actually know how it
works. In fact the last time I went on a plane I think I still
had a paper ticket. I think now everything's digital. This
bagel this it's kind of something made out of flour and
water. This bagel is a plain bagel. So again I'm trying to
point here. Uh there we go. Uh different spellings. Different
meanings. Same pronunciation. When I buy bagels I like to buy
what's called an everything bagel. I find a plain bagel to
be a little bit boring. I also like cinnamon raisin bagels.
Those are yummy. But plain is a very popular choice in our
house for sure. Sometimes your car breaks down and then you need a
tow. You need to call a tow truck. Because you can't drive
your car. Sometimes maybe you have a flat tire. Maybe the
engine won't turn over. And so you need a tow. And so you
would call a tow truck. On your feet though you have on each
foot toes. You have five toes on each foot. Um and your toes
are what help you walk and keep your balance. I think I'm not sure
how this works but the toes are what make the foot stable when
it contacts the ground I think when you walk with bare feet you can
kind of grip the ground with your toes a little bit. This is
my action for toe. It's a little strange looking. But yes
sometimes your car will break down and you need a tow.
Sometimes you might hit your foot against the wall and stub
your toe. That's what we say when you hurt your toe in that
way. Bear and bare. So I made sure I found a picture of
someone who wasn't bare naked. This man is at least wearing
something but his back is bare. You'll notice earlier I said
that when you have bare feet you can use your toes to grip
the carpet. But on the other side of this slide there is a
bear. A bear is a type of animal. There are bears in
Canada. When you go to Northern Ontario or when you go out west
there are bears. There are black bears Out west there are
grizzly bears. Bears are ferocious dangerous animals. If
you see a bear I'm not sure what you're supposed to do.
Don't go where there are bears. That's what you should do.
Bears are dangerous. Um but sometimes in the summer you
might want to enjoy the sun a little bit. So you might have
your arms bare in the summer. You might wear a short sleeved
shirt. Or like I said before you might walk around in bare
feet. And of course the phrase we use when someone has no
clothes on is we say they are naked or we might say they're
bare naked. We might add the word bare to that as well.
There's a pizza over there. There's a whole pizza. Uh noone
has eaten a slice yet. There's a whole pizza on the far side
there. It looks yummy. Although I think it might have olives on
it. I'm not I do like olives but I like black olives a
little better than green olives. But there is a whole
pizza over there. The person who ordered it said they wanted
pepperoni on the whole pizza. Cheese on the whole pizza. And
I think it's either hot peppers or olives on the whole pizza.
This person though closer to me has used a drill to drill a
hole. The piece of wood has a hole in it now. Again same
pronunciation. You can eat a whole pizza. I don't recommend
it. Uh you can use a drill to drill a hole. If you need a
hole in something. Beat and beet. Now beat has a number of
different meanings. You can use it to talk about beating a
drum. You can also use it to talk about when someone beats
someone else. Not a very nice thing to happen. But when you
use the word beat with the A in it. You could say oh he's he's
beating the drums You can also say he's playing a beat on the
drums. But closer to me here you'll see a vegetable a root
vegetable that we call a beet. Uh beets are usually very very
dark red purple. Kind of a mixture of the two. Um and when
you cook beets it has a very unique smell. So you play a
beat on a drum. And you can eat beets if you if you like them.
Not everyone likes beets. Sometimes if you look at the
far side you'll see that there's a small insect called a
flea. Sometimes dogs and cats will have fleas on them. Fleas
are not very nice. The fleas bite the dog or bite the cat.
Uh but sometimes you're in a situation where you need to run
away. You need to flee. So this is another verb we use to mean
to run away. Usually we use this to talk about a dangerous
situation. The building was on fire. They needed to flee the
building. Or there was a concern in the area that there
was someone doing something bad. So people needed to flee
the area. So it simply means that you need to run away. You
need to flee. And usually when there's an emergency of some
kind. When you need to stop your car you will use the
brakes to brake. It's a verb and a noun. So your car has
brakes. B R A K E brakes. Your car has brakes. It has a brake
pedal. When you want to brake you push the brake pedal and
then the brakes will slow your car down. Notice it's a verb
and a noun. I think I mentioned that already. Um but sometimes
people will break something. This person is trying to break
the door. And he's trying to Break into the house. So I use
that as a verb as well. Um so he's trying to break the door
and when he has broken the door he will be inside. Hopefully he
doesn't steal anything. Steal and steel. Those are homophones
too. I think I have a slide for those coming up. We'll see if I
remember. So this was on the thumbnail pause and paws. When
you're listening to music or when you're watching something
on your computer or on your TV if you need to get a drink or
go to the washroom or bathroom as they say in America you
might hit the pause button. The pause button stops. You could
actually do that with a live stream. You could pause right
now and go get a drink and come back and hit play when you come
back. But paws these little footprints here. Paws are what
dogs and cat and other animals like that have. So my dogs have
four paws. When they walk in the mud they leave paw prints.
But they definitely have paws. Walter likes to jump and put
his paws on you. It's not very nice right now if I'm leaving
for work wearing clean clothes. Sometimes Walter will try to
put his paws on me and then once I did get muddy and I had
to change my shirt. But the pause button will stop something
that's playing like music or a video. And dogs and cats and
other animals like that have paws. Night and knight. So last
night it rained. Last night I woke up and I heard the sound
of rain outside. So when it's night time at night it's very
dark outside. Sometimes you'll see the moon and stars at
night. I'm trying to use the phrase at night a bit because I
know people have trouble with prepositions. I did the same
with on a plane and I'll try to do that as much as I can. But
at night it's very peaceful outside but it can also be a
little bit scary. Not everyone enjoys being outside at night.
And then a knight is a person who in history who wore lots of
armour and had a sword and a shield and they fought in
different battles. So at night it's dark outside. If you watch
really if you watch movies about a long time ago you might
see a knight. Scent and cent. Do you know what lavender is?
If you look in the far on the far picture you'll see what's
called lavender. Lavender has an amazing scent. If you ever
go to a lavender farm or walk through a lavender field. It
just smells amazing. The scent of lavender is beautiful. It's
a it's a nice nice smell. This on the close picture though is
a penny or a couple of pennies. So we would call this one
cent. 2 cents actually. But scent which refers to smell and
cent which refers to one penny have the same pronunciation. Knot
and not when you pull your boat up to the dock. You need
to tie it up with a good knot. Hopefully you at some point in
your life learned to tie knots. You at the least should know
how to tie a knot on your shoe. Um but learning how to tie a
knot in a rope or string is just a good skill to have.
Sometimes you go somewhere and you're not allowed to do
something. This red circle with the line through is kind of a
symbol for things you're not allowed to do. It might have a
cigarette in the middle. It might have a cell phone, a
phone in the middle, which means no smoking or you're not
allowed to use your cellphone. Knot and not. Heal
and heel. If you hurt yourself it looks like this person hurt
their hand. Maybe even broke a finger and now they have to
wait for their finger to heal. They have to wait weeks. They
can't bend their finger because it needs to heal. Um I don't
know if you've ever broken a bone or hurt yourself but it's
not a lot of fun when you're waiting to heal. Um sometimes
it can be quite boring. What I recommend is that you watch
lots of English lessons on YouTube. If you've broken a
bone or if you've been sick and you're waiting to heal do that and then
of course the back part of your foot is called the heel. Um I
actually hurt my heel a couple weeks ago actually a couple
months ago now because I jumped on and off the tractor a lot
one day and I kept landing and then the next day my heel was
sore. So I had to wait for my heel to heal. In the far
picture you'll see people under the ground digging out ore and
minerals. We would say that that person is a miner. A miner
is someone who works in a mine. A miner is someone who mines
ore like or something like coal. There are a lot of
different things that we dig out of the earth. A lot of
things that we mine. And the people who do it are called
miners. In this close picture you see some children playing
hockey. And we would say that they are minors. In Ontario
Canada if you are under age of 18 you are a minor. It means
that you are not an adult yet. There are things you're not
allowed to do because you're a minor. And then we also use it
to talk about things like these kids are playing in minor
hockey. So we have minor hockey leagues which mean their
league's hockey leagues for kids who are under the age of
eighteen. When you bake bread you use flour. Flour is made
from wheat. We harvest wheat. We dry the wheat kernel. We
grind the wheat up and then well we don't do that. Someone
else does that. We just go to the store and buy a bag of
flour. Then we come home and we bake things like bread or cakes
using the flour. Jen and I grow flowers. A flower is a nice
beautiful plant with a a stem and petals and it just looks
beautiful and sometimes it has a nice scent like lavender. So
you bake bread with flour. You make a bouquet with flowers as
well. I should rephrase this. You don't use flour like when
you bake with flour there's no plural to flour. I guess you
could say there's different kinds of flours at the store
but normally you bake with flour. A cup of flour. You
make a bouquet though with many many different flowers. When I
go to work I wear a shoe. My shoe actually looks a lot like
the shoe way over there. I have a pair of brown shoes. I have a
pair of black shoes. It's nice to have good shoes. I'm on my
feet all day. I need to be comfortable when I wear my
shoes. I need to be I need to be able to come home and not
have sore feet. Sometimes though a fly will buzz around
while I'm doing my lesson. Or maybe one of my dogs will come
and try to interrupt me when I'm making a video and then I
shoo them away. I'll even say that word. I'll be like shoo
get out of here or shoo. Get out of here if it was a fly. I
wouldn't do this for a dog. Whine and wine. Someone who
whines a lot when you whine when you look like this man over
here with the kind of the grouchy look. It means you
complain a lot. Ah why do I have to work an extra hour? Why
do I have to sometimes my kids whine if they don't like what we
made for supper. They'll whine and say I don't want to eat
this. This isn't very yummy. So when you whine it means you are
complaining. We do however make something from grapes. Which is
called wine. Grapes grow in a vineyard. They're harvested.
They're for their juice. The juice is fermented and
eventually we have what's called wine which is a beverage
or drink with alcohol in it made from grapes. So this is
kind of a funny one. Uh last night for supper we had peas.
We cook different vegetables all the time. Last night we had
peas. Peas are small green spheres I guess. A sphere is
like a well a sphere is a try to explain what a sphere is.
It's like it's a round 3D object. Never mind. A pea is a
kind of vegetable. This person though is by the toilet and he
is taking a pee. This is an informal way to talk about I
guess the scientific word would be urination. Um but in English
we'll say I need to go to the bathroom. If you're talking to
someone you know well like a family member or a friend. You
might use the informal phrase oh I just need to go pee or I
need to take a pee. I'll see you in a minute. I just need to
go pee. So this guy is at the toilet he's taking a pee.
Remember this is kind of informal. Normally you would
just say that you need to go to the bathroom. Oh I just need to
go to the bathroom before we leave. I love it when I go to a
store and things are on sale. When a store has a sale it
means that things are cheaper than normal. Maybe they're 10%
off or 20% off. You can see I'm getting excited already.
Whenever something is on sale I can buy more and use less
money. A ship like this though this boat has a sail on it. It
uses a sail in order to catch the wind and to have propulsion
I guess would be the word for it. So when you go to a store
sometimes things are on sale. When you go in a sailboat it
has a sail. So when you build something out of wood you're
going to need boards. A board is a piece of wood that has
been made square. So they chopped down the tree. They
they cut the lumber into boards and you're you're going to need
to buy a board. We saw a board earlier when we the picture of
someone that drilled a hole through the board. This kid though is
bored. He is not enjoying what's happening in his class
or wherever he is. This kid is bored. When you're bored you're
not excited. You're not happy. You're not enjoying what's
happening. Um but usually if I go and buy a lot of boards to
build something I'm not bored. Okay because I like building
things. If you look way over there these two guys are in a
band. They've decided that they're going to play music
together and so they formed a band and they are now playing
in a band. One guy is playing the guitar. The other guy is
playing the saxophone. A band is just a group of people who
play different instruments to make music. It's fun to go to a
concert and see a popular band. Um but sometimes something
might be banned. When something is banned it means it's not
allowed anymore. At our school certain kinds of video games are
banned. You're not allowed to play games on your phone. It's
banned. On the property of public buildings in Ontario
smoking is banned. You're not allowed to smoke. So if you
play music in with a group of people you would probably call
it a band and if you go somewhere and you're not
allowed to do something it we would say that it is banned.
Same pronunciation. Hey the ocean has tides. The tide comes
in. The tide goes out. The water is different levels. It's
different heights at different times of the day. Um so when
you see the tide coming in you probably want to move back. Uh
if you're sitting close to the edge of the of the ocean and
you don't want to get wet you would move back because the
tide is coming in. But like the word knot when you have ropes
you sometimes they need to be tied. Um so here you can see that
these ropes are tied to what looks like a sail. So you make
a knot in order to tie a rope to something and then you say
it is tied. This is definitely tied up. One of my favourite
things to eat is something called a sundae. Um when I have
ice cream I like to have it in a bowl. Sometimes with some
nuts or pieces of chocolate and some chocolate sauce we would
call that a sundae. It's different than an ice cream
cone where you have something that's kind of like a cookie I
guess with ice cream on top. A sundae is in a bowl. Um and
when you go to a restaurant you can say oh I'll have a
chocolate fudge sundae. Uh or I'll have a strawberry sundae. So
that would be ice cream with whatever you wanted on top of
it. So definitely it's ice cream with toppings. Which is
pronounced the same way as the day of the week. In a couple
days it will be Sunday. Sunday is a really nice day. It's a
day where at least in this part of the world you don't need to
work. So Sunday is kind of fun. It's part of the weekend.
Saturday and Sunday are the two days that I use as my weekend.
I work from Monday to Friday and I have Saturday and Sunday
off. So that's very very nice. Bolder and boulder. So when you
type in a certain font you can type it in the normal way or
you can make it bolder. Okay. So you you might type something
on a document and your boss might say make the title
bolder. It means to make it thicker. If I am afraid to do
things I might want to be bolder. B O L D E R. The same
as making a font bolder. But a boulder B O U L D E R. Boulder is
a large rock. This would be a boulder. A boulder would be like a
rock that's almost the same height as I am. When you climb
a mountain you try to get to the peak. If you look at the
far picture there looks like there it looks like there is a
restaurant at the peak of this mountain. Um so when you climb
a mountain your goal is to get to the peak. This girl though
is taking a peak around the corner. She is peaking around
the corner. The verb to peak means to like I used to did I
used to do this? I used to start my lesson right? With the
piece of paper and then I would well I would peek from behind
the piece of paper. So steel and steal last week we did a
lesson on building materials. I think that was last week. We
talked about rebar. Rebar is made out of steel. In the far
picture you see some steel that's probably going to be
used with concrete in order to make a building. This guy
though is trying to steal something. Okay? S T E A L is
the verb we use when someone is taking something that isn't
theirs. Um the truck in the far picture is dumping waste. Waste
is a general term we use for garbage or trash. Anything that
we as humans don't need anymore and can't use we say it is
waste. Um we actually produce too much waste. Humans need to
learn to recycle more stuff because we produce too much
waste and it ends up getting dumped in the dump. Um but this
guy has a belt around his waist. So you put a belt around
your waist in order to hold your pants up. It's good to
wear a belt. If your pants are too loose, wearing a belt will
help you a lot. Um this mouse in the far picture has a tail.
Um a lot of animals have tails. My dog has a tail. All of our
cats have tails. My other dog has a tail. Humans do not have
tails though. This little boy though is telling a tale. T A L
E tale is another word for a story. It's really nice.
Children really like it when their parents or grandparents
read them a story or tell them a tale. So we can use the word
tale T A L E to talk about a story. I mentioned I liked it
when things are on sale because I like it when things are
cheap. In the far photo you can say that see that things are
twenty, 30, or 50% off at that store. If you were to buy
something there it would be cheap. It's nice to buy things
when they are cheap. Now cheap has another meaning. When
something isn't made well you can also say it's cheap. Ah
that the toy broke well it was just a cheap toy anyways. But
this bird is cheeping. A bird can cheep. When you hear a bird
I'm using the word cheep to make a bird sound. But in the
morning sometimes we can hear the birds cheep outside of our
window. You also use chirp cheep chirp or sing but
sometimes you will hear a bird cheep. Mail and male. This one
was mentioned in the chat. Sometimes you get email which
is a kind of communication. Sometimes you get a letter in
the mail. Like an actual envelope with a letter inside
of it and a stamp. We go and get our mail everyday. M A I L.
From the mailbox. The mailbox is along the road. I am a male.
When you go somewhere and when you fill out a form it might
ask if you are male or female. And so you would check off
Whether you are male which I'm not going to describe any
further. Um or if you are female. But definitely mail and
male are pronounced the same way. If you are in a play it's
a little hard to see this in the far picture. If you are in
a play we say that you are playing a role. If I was in a
play and I was Hamlet I would someone might say oh what's
your role? Oh I'm playing the role of Hamlet. So role refers
to your function. Someone can even ask you this about work.
They can say what's your role at work? Oh I'm the director of
education. I I'm not by the way. But that would be my role.
This here is a small what we call a bun or a roll. Sometimes
when you have dinner you'll have a roll with dinner. You
can also use roll to talk about here. I can roll this along my
hand R O L L roll. I can roll that along my hand. Read and
reed. So this child is reading. I think it's a child. Hard to
tell. The picture's very small for me. This person is reading.
They have decided to read the dictionary. It's probably hard
to read the dictionary. But in the far picture this person is
reading. Things that grow along waterways. Um there's a certain
kind of plant that grows along rivers and lakes and we call
them reeds. A reed is kind of like a grass that likes to grow
in a place where it's very very wet. So here you have a person
who has decided to read and along this lake you have a reed
some reeds if I use the plural This came up a little bit. Uh
ate is the past participle of to eat. So yesterday I ate
three meals. Yesterday I ate too much. If I'm talking about
eating in the past I would use ate. But it's also a number.
Eight right? One, two, three, four, five, six, 7, eight,
nine, ten. How fast can I say that? One, two, three, and
five, six, 7, eight, nine, ten. When I was a kid we used to
have races at school to see who could count to ten the fastest.
If you listen I do say every number but I don't pronounce it
very well. One 2 three four 5 6 7 8 9 ten. One 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10. One,
two, three, four, five, six, 7, eight, nine, ten. One, 2, three,
four, five, 6 7, eight, nine, ten. There you go. You'll
that's not a good way to pronounce the numbers one
through ten by the way. Buy and bye. So, when you go to the
store, you go there because you need to buy something. You need
to give someone money because you need whatever they are
selling in the far picture you can see the person is going to
buy an apple. I think it's an apple. Yes could be
pomegranates. No apples. I think past the apples are
tomatoes maybe. This person though in the closer picture is
waving bye. When you say bye to someone it means they are
leaving and you just want to say bye to them. You want to
kind of it's the opposite of hi. Right? Hi is what you say
when you see someone. Bye is what you say when they leave.
Sell and cell. So when you have something you don't want
anymore you might decide to sell it. That means if someone
gives you money they can have it. I had a computer once and I
didn't want it anymore. So I decided to sell the computer.
So someone gave me money and then they took it. So that was
really nice. However on earth almost every living thing is
made up of cells. Almost. I think every living thing is
made up of cells. Cells are very very very tiny parts of
all living things. Our bodies are made up of cells. Also if
you commit a crime they put you in a prison cell. So that's
another use of the word cell. Marry and Merry. So when you
decide that you like someone you might decide to marry. You
might decide to get married. So in the far picture they have
decided to marry. Around Christmas time though we say
merry Christmas. Or if you talk about a bunch of people who are
having fun and laughing you might say they're very merry.
Now it's kind of an older word we don't use the word merry in
the happiness sense very much anymore. But definitely Marry
and merry are pronounced the same. Meet and meat. When you
start a new job you're going to meet a lot of new people. In
the far picture you can see that the person is shaking
hands. They're probably saying hi. Because as they start their
job they meet their colleagues. When you meet someone it means
that you see them for the first time maybe someone introduces
them to you. Today when I go to school in the one class there's
going to be a guest speaker. And it will be fun to meet that
person. Also if you are someone who likes chicken or pork or
beef it means you like to eat meat. Meat is a source of
protein that comes from animals that people cook and eat. So in
the far picture the person is definitely going to meet this
person or is meeting this person. And here we have some
meat. I think it's chicken. This person in the far picture
ran a race and they won. They came in first place. They won
the race. Hopefully whatever sport you watch hopefully your
team has a lot of wins this year. It's really cool when you
can say my team won a lot of games this past year. Um and
also when you count you start with the number one. Completely
different spellings. Won and one. Totally the same
pronunciation. This is my right hand. So I wear my Fitbit and
my wedding ring on my left hand. This is my right hand. I
use my right hand to write. This is my dominant hand. I am
right handed. When I write W R I T E I write with my right
hand. Is that confusing? I write with my right hand.
Should I put that in the chat? Maybe I'll do that for a second
here. I write with my right hand. There we go. Hopefully I
did that right. Yes I did. Um I write with my right hand. Um
some people write with their left hand because they are left
handed. When you go out on the sea you need a really big boat.
You might want to even go on a large ship if you go out on the
sea. There's the Mediterranean Sea. There are many huge seas
around the world. Um and it's definitely just a large body of
water. But we also have the verb to see. Right now I can
see Jen outside. I can see Oscar. I can see a cat. I'm
sorry I don't have another camera. But I can see Walter
running. A lot of times Oscar walks our older dog and Walter
runs around him. So I can see them right now. So in the far
picture you can see the person doesn't have a lot of muscle.
Their arm looks not very muscly. That would be the word
I would say. So I think this person might be kind of weak.
Weak is the opposite of strong. So in the far picture I have a
picture of someone who is weak. They are not strong. In this
picture though you see on the wall this person has written
down everything they have to do during the week. So during the week
they have a bunch of things they need to do. So they have
written all of those things on the wall. So if you're not
strong you're weak in the far picture. And if you think about
the next seven days you can think about what you're going
to do this week. What you're going to do the rest of the
week.