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Re:The Unsuitability of English (2015) by ApplaudPumice on Sunday February 21, 2016 @04:50PM (#11146750)
In english words change meaning just by slightly changing accent.

Ship, sheep buy, by sheet, shit

see also http://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/homophones-sam...

Also english doesn't (compared to italian) is filled with exceptions.

Re:The Unsuitability of English (2015) by DanBC on Sunday February 21, 2016 @05:54PM (#11147064)
Many people are going to pronounce "buy", "by", and "bye" exactly the same way. The only way to tell the difference would be from how the word is used in a sentence.
Re:The Unsuitability of English (2015) by igravious on Sunday February 21, 2016 @06:23PM (#11147218)
Wiktionary lists bi, buy, and by as homophones to bye

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bye

IPA: /baɪ/

Re:The Unsuitability of English (2015) by foldr on Sunday February 21, 2016 @07:33PM (#11147493)
The difference between 'ship' and 'sheep' and 'sheet' and 'shit' is the difference between a tense and a lax vowel. Italian doesn't make use of this distinction, so it's hard for Italians to hear the difference, but it's a perfectly ordinary distinction in vowel quality used in many languages.

There is no difference at all in the pronunciation of 'buy' and 'by'.

Re:The Unsuitability of English (2015) by stordoff on Sunday February 21, 2016 @07:55PM (#11147576)
This also varies between English accents. Many American-English accents will pronounce "Mary", "merry", and "marry" the same, but in British-English they all sound different.