Question

One advantage of unsystematic spelling is that it enables us to distinguish the written forms of homophones from one another. What is a homophone?

Answer 1

Homophones are words that have exactly the same sound (pronunciation) but different meanings and (usually) spelling.

For example, the following two words have the same sound, but different meanings and spelling:

hour 

our 

Usually, homophones are in groups of two (our, hour), but occasionally they can be in groups of three (to, too, two) or even more. If we take our bear example, we can add another word to the group:

bear (noun: large, heavy animal with thick fur)
bear (verb: tolerate, endure)
bare (adjective: naked, without clothes)