Very interesting, Peter!

  To your list perhaps you should add "heterographs," which would, I
suppose,
be variant spellings, e.g.,
honor & honour, catalogue & catalog;

and "heterophones," which might be words with the same meaning and spelling
that are pronounced differently, maybe like the
present and past tenses of "read."
.

Nelson Blachman, retired physicist
Oakland, Calif.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Seymour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 8:30 PM
Subject: Re: phonetic spell checker


> Dear Janice,
>
> You have an interesting problem regarding homophone errors, and
> it is a particular concern to people, like me, who use the voice
> synthesis of a screen-reader, because homophones don't get caught
> by spell-checkers and, of course, the ear doesn't pick up
> homophonic errors.
>
> Interestingly, the screen-reader does alert the listener to
> spelling errors in some cases. E.G., "necessary", misspelled as
> "neccessary, and "professor", misspelled as "proffessor" or
> "profesor", sound a lot more wrong than they look.
>
> Perhaps you've noticed this additional usefulness of a
> screen-reader when working with the student who you mention, but
> I have noted that voice synthesis could be a useful tool for
> sighted students because of its peripheral value of
> mispronouncing spelling errors.
>
> If you can't find a program to pick out homophones, you might try
> altering the spell-checker's dictionary by deleting the
> troublesome homophones, so that it flags them as misspellings. In
> this way, it would flag those homophones so that the student can
> make sure that they are correct.
>
> Or, you can try creating a list of the troublesome homophones as
> they occur. Then, your student can do a search of his documents
> with that list and make sure that he/she has written the desired
> word. I have a list of problematic words for me and I use this
> solution.
>
> If you do find a homophone checker, I and others on this list
> would be eager to hear of it.
>
> You inquired about a "phonetic spell checker", and the example
> you gave, construction spelled with an initial "K", is a good
> one. The problem of a spell-checker not presenting a useful list
> of possible corrections, especially when the misspelling occurs
> at the beginning of a word, is not unknown to people doing
> ordinary spell-checking. For example, I once wrote a simple word
> like "Jist" and my spell-checker refused to cough up the correct
> spelling of "gist". The best solution would be a better spell-checker, but
> meanwhile, it is useful to be aware of one's bug-a-boos, and to know how
to
> alter a misspelling so as to prompt your
> spell-checker to come up with a better list of related words.
>
> Sorry I don't have any advice about the specific programs, Jaws,
> Word, or Read&Write, that you mentioned, but I hope that my
> general advice proves useful.
>
> Good Luck,
> Peter Seymour
>
> P.S. By the way, thank you for using the word "homophone"
> correctly. Most people don't realize that the word "homonym" is
> used best when reserved to describe words that differ only in
> their meanings. Below is a relevant excerpt from my notes,
> written for myself for now, but maybe for a book in the future.
>
>
> the three most recognizable features of a word are its
> 1) meaning, the thing that is named: the "nym";
> 2) pronunciation or sound: the "phone"; and
> 3) spelling: the "graph".
> The most familiar terms that group words based on their sharing
> only one of these three features are:
>
> Synonym -- words that name the same thing, e.g. injure and harm.
> Antonym -- words that name opposing things, e.g. tall and short.
> Homophone -- words that sound alike, e.g. waist and waste.
> Homograph -- words with identical spellings, e.g. bow and bow
> (one is bending at the waist or the front of a ship, the other
> flings an arrow or is tied around a present, which is also a
> homograph).
>
> A homonym defines words that are both homophones and homographs,
> and thus differ only in their meanings. The different senses of a
> word, found listed under the same entry in a dictionary, are
> homonyms. E.G., Bear -- noun, an animal vs verb, to endure.
>
> However, because the distinguishing feature between homonyms is
> the difference in what is named, "homonym" would be more accurate
> if called just the opposite: a "heteronym", meaning different
> name. The confusion of this word is exemplified by the fact that
> it is often used instead of "homophone", and less so in place of
> "homograph".
>
> *********
>
> At 02:50 PM 3/16/02 -0600, you wrote:
>
> >I am looking for writing tools that will work with Jaws and
> Word. I work with a student who spells phonetically and also has
> trouble with homophones like wait and weight. For example, my
> student might write this: "The hare die is read." meaning "The
> hair dye is red." He needs:
>
> 1) a phonetic spell checker, which would be able to tell that
> "knstrukshun" might mean "construction".
>
> 2) Something to detect "confusables" or homophones and give their
> definitions.
>
> >Read&Write is software that will do these tasks, but it has its
> own speech output. If anyone has managed to use Read&Write or
> Aurora with Jaws or knows of some other tool that works with
> Jaws, please let me know!
>
> >Thanks for your help
> >Janice Sowokinos
>
>
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