Homophony (writing)

See also Homophony (disambiguation)

Homophony (from Greek homos 'same', phonè 'sound') in a theory of writing systems is one of the forms of phonogram –meaning “different signs for the same value”, i.e. the same sound combinations represented by different signs.

John Heise in the Chapter 4 of 'Akkadian language', the book on the origin and development of cuneiform gives the following example (see cuneiform transliteration):



He comments: “In transliterations the same sounds that are represented by different cuneiform signs are distinguished with an accent or an index. The signs for ni, ní (i with accent aigu), nì (i with accent grave), ni4, ni5, ... are all different cuneiform symbols. ní may be called (and pronounced among Assyriologists) ni2 and nì as ni3. These accents thus have nothing to do with word accent.”