Have/halve

The "a" in halving should be longer, to my mind.

Longer in duration, I think the previous poster meant. I have the same feeling. Still, the context would primarily decide this one. I would avoid it if I could... perhaps recasting as "dividing in half."

'hal' + 'ving'

I think the 'L' sound makes all the difference here...

it would if there WAS an "L" sound in "halving," which there is not.

the vowel sound in "halve" is the sound [a:]. this is a long vowel sound and sounds something like the pronunciation of the word "are".

the vowel sound in "have" is the sound [ae]. this is a sound made by opening the mouth wider and producing the sound from the mouth (as opposed to producing it from the voice in the throat). it's the same sound as produced by the word "cat" or "hat".

but, then again, pronunciation will vary from country to country.

Blend is correct in that pronunciation varies from country to country and even within countries. In my own speech (a very pure "baseline American" accent, according to a linguist I once dated) and in the speech of the Texans I live among, there is no difference between the two words at all.

There should be a longer duration for halving. Although, in the wonderful country of Australia (and the UK I suppose) the words sound different. :-)

JBL is right about them sounding very different in Australia.

Hi! Do not prompt as me to send e-mail? = (

Hi, why nobody responds me?

Both I (a native-born Californian) and my wife (a Midwesterner) pronounce the words slightly differently, although not nearly so differently as the difference between [a:] and [ae]. "Halve", for both of us, has the faintest trace of an "l" in the pronunciation--not an actual "l" but a slight modification of the "a" vowel to end farther back on the palate, and with a slightly higher palate. I'm not sure what this distinction is called phonetically.

You certainly ask an interesting question, but I have to disagree that "...in this case both correct." In the example you gave, if you substitute the word "have", then the sentence becomes nonsensical, so you CAN tell by the context, at least in this case.

But I am curious as to why you find this so unusual. There are many thousands of homonyms, or more specifically, homophones in the engish language. There are innumerable ways that truly ambiguous sentences can be constructed. Throw in homographs, words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings and sometimes different pronunciations, and it gets really interesting. Such ambiguity is often at the basis of poems literature, even art and music. This is often exploited in jokes as well.

For a little fun, see my previous post in
http://www.painintheenglish.com/post.asp?id=524
(Owed to a Spell Chequer)

oops, I meant "having" not "have"

Hi
As in your guestbook to include support html?