Ghost Writers in the Sky!

Over at Language Log Mark Liberman quotes a Philly columnist who says a football player "can be a road-grater due to his size", and then points out that

It's not surprising. For most Americans, grader and grater are homophones. And grader in the sense of "machine for leveling earth" is less salient than the sense of "someone who assigns grades", while what a road grader does to dirt could be thought of as grating it, by analogy to what cheese grater does to cheese.

I have no opinion on the player (never heard of him), but that grader/grater homophone thing? It's commonly said, and I always thought that wasn't true, no matter how many times I read it - surely I can hear a difference between bitter and bidder or matter and madder, I would think.

Then on Thursday a friend who goes to a movie series of mostly indies and foreign films asked me if I'd seen "Ghost Rider". With Nicholas Cage, I asked tentatively, finding it impossible to believe that her film series was showing that movie. She blinked at me and said, "I don't think so." Another co-worker said, "Yes, you said you'd seen it, or I think you did. Roman Polanski?"

Oh. With Ewan McGregor and Kim Cattrall and Pierce Brosnan. And a T... The Ghost Writer.

So, yes. I had seen it, and it did belong - and obviously I don't hear (or probably say) a difference. It's all in my head - both ways. If the context doesn't make it clear - crystal clear - which word is meant, I really don't hear the difference. Which means I never really hear the difference - I just know which word is being said. And that's not the same thing at all - that's like differentiating any other pair of homonyms.

It's true after all.