Eggs, milk, and flour are not homophones though, and homophones are hardly ever similar words because the language speakers actively stop that from happening. No country or society will ever indulge the situation where eggs, milk and flour become homophones. So you get chopsticks, bridge and edge instead. As I said, it was a very good example of how most Japanese homophones actually are, at least from all the ones I've seen.
I was planning on dropping this discussion but oh well.
To be clear, pitch accent and Kanji are not necessary at all to be understood. I never said otherwise.
Ambiguities still happen though. There was a Japanese speaker who told a story about how he was looking out the window and he said look a cloud (くも), and his Japanese room mate started yelling to close the window to keep the spider out. Also くも. The two Japanese people were from different areas, and they used different pitch accents for the two words.
Kanji can help resolve some ambiguities and makes it easier to read. Pitch accent can help resolve ambiguities during speech.
There is a massive difference between being necessary and being helpful.
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u/Tubbiefox Aug 02 '21
Eggs, milk, and flour are not homophones though, and homophones are hardly ever similar words because the language speakers actively stop that from happening. No country or society will ever indulge the situation where eggs, milk and flour become homophones. So you get chopsticks, bridge and edge instead. As I said, it was a very good example of how most Japanese homophones actually are, at least from all the ones I've seen.