Free English Class! Homophones: Same Pronunciation, Different Meaning and Spelling! ⏸️🐾(Lesson Only)

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.