English

In some of these cases, American and British English pronunciations differ. One systematic case appears in the stress pattern of some deverbal nouns.

For a longer list, see wikt:Category:English heteronyms.

French

In French, most heteronyms result from certain endings being pronounced differently in verbs and nouns. In particular, -ent as a third person plural verb ending is silent while as an adjective ending, it is pronounced IPA: [ɑ̃].

Modern Greek

Modern Greek spelling is largely unambiguous, but there are a few cases where a word has distinct learned and vernacular meaning and pronunciation, despite having the same root, and where <ia> is pronounced /ja/ vs. /i.a/;^[5] Some of these distinctions are being neutralized in modern speech.^[6]

Italian

Italian spelling is largely unambiguous, althouɡh there are some exceptions:

• open and closed ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ (/ɛ, e/ and /ɔ, o/) are not distinguished;
• the voiced and unvoiced pronunciations of ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩ (/s, z/ and /ts, dz/) are not distinguished;
• stress, which is usually but not always on the penult, is not marked except when it is on the final syllable;
• in some cases, digraphs and trigraphs like ⟨sci⟩ (/ʃ(i)/), ⟨ci⟩ (/tʃ(i)/), ⟨gi⟩ (/dʒ(i)/), ⟨gli⟩ (/ʎ(i)/) are pronounced using the values of their component letters;^{[dubious – discuss][example needed]}
• ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ may have a vocalic (/i, u/) or a consonantal (/j, w/) value.^{[example needed]}

When stress is on the final, the vowel is written with an accent: mori 'mulberries' and morì 'he/she died'. Some monosyllabic words are also differentiated with an accent: e /e/ 'and' and è /ɛ/ 'he/she is'. These cases are not heteronyms.

Some common cases:^[7]

Dutch

Dutch has heteronyms which vary in stress position, known as klemtoonhomogramen 'stress homograms', such as appel: [ˈɑpəl] 'apple' vs. [ɑˈpɛl] 'appeal' (formerly written appèl). Other examples include beamen, bedelen, hockeyster, kantelen, misdadiger, overweg, verspringen, verwerpen.

The word plant is generally pronounced [plɑnt], but may be pronounced [plɛnt] in the sense 'he/she plans'.

German

German has few heteronyms, for example:^[8]

• Some vary in stress position: umfahren 'to knock down' vs. umfahren 'to bypass'; übersetzen 'to translate' vs. 'to traverse'; Spiegelei 'fried egg' vs. 'mirroring'.
• Some are compounded differently: Staubecken as Stau-becken vs. Staub-Ecken or Wachstube as 'Wach-stube' vs. 'Wachs-tube'; etc.
• Several are borrowings: modern 'to molder' (derived from Moder) vs. 'modern' (borrowed from French) or Montage 'Mondays' vs. 'mounting, installing, assembling' (the latter borrowed from French).