Russian-to-English Homographs

Authors

Lee B. Croft

Abstract

Most dictionaries define homograph in terms of words taken from the same language, saying nothing about words from two different languages involving partially overlapping alphabets (e.g., the English Latin alphabet and the Russian Cyrillic alphabet). For example, in their Dictionary or Linguistics (Littlefield and Adams, 1969), Mario Pei and Frank Gaynor define homograph as "a word identical in written form with another given word of the same language, but entirely different in origin, sound, and meaning". In contrast, this paper, in considered conformance with the etymology of the word from the Greek, defines an interlingual homograph to be one of two or more words which are identically written regardless of their meanings, derivation, pronunciation, language membership or alphabet constituency.

Recommended Citation

Croft, Lee B. (1975) "Russian-to-English Homographs," Word Ways: Vol. 8 : Iss. 4 , Article 5.
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/wordways/vol8/iss4/5