Parish wrote: > Garth Wallace wrote: > >> >> It's not a matter of pronunciation. "Your" and "you're" are >> homophones--they are pronounced exactly the same. It's a spelling >> mistake, like spelling "read" (past tense) "red". >> > > I wonder. Do any other languages have the the scope for puns and other > "word games" that English is so suitable for?
Japanese is filled with puns. Each kanjii (the characters borrowed from Chinese) has (usually) at least two different pronunciations (one borrowed from Chinese, the other a root with the same meaning from native Japanese). Many kanjii share Chinese readings, even if their meanings are totally different (this is an artifact of the fact that the same sound with a different pitch is a different word in Chinese, but not in Japanese). Frequently a Japanese reading will match the Chinese readings of a pair of kanjii unrelated to the first. And so on. Then you can throw in foreign loanwords and onomatopoeia, and it becomes a real mess. Yes, you can come up with some real groaners in Japanese. It's almost hard *not* to sometimes.
