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Malone

If the homophone words are 4 and 5 letters, I pronounce them exactly the same!

Jigjag

Thanks. They are - and I knew there would be many PU members who would pronounce them exactly the same. I'm also sure that there are huge swathes of the country where people would be bewildered by this! From a quick read-through in Chambers, the homophone is nowhere near as certain as in other (sometimes disputed ) words. Just out of curiosity, would these all sound the same to you?....
Saw Sore
Maw More
Caw Core

Just looked in.
I think you must be discussing Floor and Flaw!
I think we've been there before!

Rossim,

Yes, I've been faced with 'flaw' and 'floor' before (befaw?) ... and grimace every single time. I was happy set my moan down in writing and then get back to non-contentious clues.

Flaw (homophone) floor.

I suspect that most setters are of that ever popular breed: white middle class males speaking Received Pronunciation. Just like me, in fact. 😑

Thanks, Paul...

Even though I don't like many of the homophones (aka alleged homophones in many parts of the country), I often manage to ignore them. Even when I don't, can't, I dock the setter a mark anyway for the laziness of the clue. (And some of them have been regurgitated for decades, not a good thing.)

Malone

Yes they sound the same to me. So do

Paw Pore Poor Pour Por
Law Lore Lure Lower Lor
Oar Ore Or Awe O'er

I use very few vowels.

Rossim

Nice to hear from you

Paul

I suppose I am white, male, working class. Only use a few flat vowels.

Don’t know if anyone’s watching ‘The Secret History of Writing’ on bbc4, Mondays at 9pm. Episode 2 tonight. Really interesting would recommend. Anyway, don't knock homophones, without them we might still be using hieroglyphs ;)

a lot of the controversy over homophones is rhotic or non-rhotic pronunciation. as a rhotic speaker, i don't see the point of including an r in the spelling if you aren't going to pronounce it...

I think I've mentioned this before, but we once went on a nature trip to Costa Rica, in which one of the other participants called flowers "flahs", wires, "wahs", and so on. Nonsense!