Homophonbia.

[Gob]

These people run a language school?

A “social media strategist” for a school in Utah has been sacked after writing a blog post explaining what a homophone was.

Tim Torkildson, the former employee at the Nomen Global Language Center, said he was removed from his role as head of social media because his boss believed that his post about homophones might give off the impression that the school promoted homosexuality.

A homophone, not to be confused with homosexual (or ironically, homophobe), is the name given to a word that sounds the name as another but has a different meaning, for example "witch" and "which", or "carat" and "carrot".

Speaking to the Salt Lake City Tribune, Torkildson said that after the post went public he was called into the office of the company’s owner Clarke Woodger, who told him he was fired.

According to Torkildson, who posted the conversation between the two on Facebook, Woodger said that Torkildson “could not be trusted” and that he was worried that the school would now be associated with homosexuality.

He further alleged that Woodger told him that the only job he would ever succeed in would be “something clerical”, where he would be “closely supervised and have immediate goals at all times.”

The homophones explanation has now been removed from the language school’s website.

Torkildson said that he understood that the word’s “homo” prefix might cause controversy, but he said that the explanation he had given had been “straightforward” and something that those in the early stages of learning English needed to know.

Woodger refuted the comments from Torkildson, saying that his decision to remove him from his post had nothing to do with homosexuality.

He told the Salt Lake Tribune that Torkildson’s recent blog postings had begun to "go off on tangents" and had become confusing and sometimes offensive.

He also said that homophones were beyond the understanding of the majority of the students at Nomen, who were mostly at the basic levels of learning the language.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Mr Humphries: Why has Mr Spooner been blackballed?
Mrs Slocombe: Because the fireman wanted a clear passage.
Mr Humphries: Now class - did you spot the homophone?!

[Lord Jim]

Looks to me like the Language Center folks are taking a pretty niggardly attitude about this...

[Lord Jim]

Homophones...

[Big RR]

When I was in school I believed we called them homonyms, probably to avoid this problem (although I wonder if any of my early phonics teachers would have ever even heard about homosexuality).

[MajGenl.Meade]

Big RR - how does homonym (a very special island) avoid any of the misunderstanding occasioned by homophone? It's not the nym and the phone that are the problem....

[BoSoxGal]

Here's the thing - a homonym is a homophone and a homogragh, or one or the other.

A homonym is not directly equal to homophone, because it can also be a homograph, and homographs and homophones aren't the same thing.

Here's a little article I found that fairly clearly explains it:

http://www.vocabulary.com/articles/choo ... homograph/

Yes, I loved diagramming sentences in school. I'm a grammar nerd and proud of it!

[Big RR]

Meade--because homonym is pronounced with the first o as a short vowel sound, while in homophone, the first o is the long vowel sound. I'd doubt that the owner would even have noticed that homonym begins with "homo" because it is pronounced differently. Homophobes are specially attuned to hearing the word "homo" with the long o.

BSG--thanks for link; I guess we'll just have to pronounce them all with the short o sound to avoid this horrible condemnation. It's kind of like when the pronunciation of the planet Uranus went from "urine-us" to "you-ra-nus", because the boys were making fun of it when "urine" was said; eventually they corrupted the other pronunciation as well.

Oh no, can that school served homogenized milk, or is that part of the gay agenda as well?

[Joe Guy]

I remember when I was a kid there were certain brand milk cartons that said, "Homo Milk" on them. I'm pretty sure the kids who drank that turned out to be homosexuals.

I never drank milk. My Mom let me put beer on my Cheerios and drink wine to help me sleep. She said she wanted a manly son.

I turned out to be tough and mean and I once beat up my father because he named me Sue.

[Beer Sponge]

I drank homo milk. On an unrelated note, Joe call me!

[Lord Jim]

I once beat up my father because he named me Sue.

Yeah well, you shouldn't have done that, because if he hadn't been considerate enough to give you that name, you wouldn't have grown up quick and mean; and you can forget about the way your fists got hard and your wits got keen...

None of that would have happened...

So, in retrospect, you really ought to be thankful for the gravel in your gut and the spit in your eye that you got from that son-of-a-bitch that named you Sue...

Just sayin'...