Correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe Britspeakers aspirate the h in lower-case "herb," thus rendering this pair a geo-linguistically limited capitonym.

PS Who's planning on joining the chat with Lederer later today? I tried it out and looks like this new Mac is up to the task, so I hope to be there.

Dear AnnaStrophic: Here is a rather extensive site on American vs Brit pronunciation. You have to scroll way down to find it, but it does agree with you that American " erb" in Brit is "herb"

http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/pronunciation.html

PS I went back and looked at this site again, and found a lot of unsatisfactory things. The pronunciation guide is quite disappointing.

I hope to make it home in time for the chat. I want to ask him why he didn't point out that capitonym is a subcategory of heteronyms. Herb and herb, however one pronounces them, are no more the same word than are cleave and cleave or let and let.

Dear Max,

We aspirate the H in Herb. However, we don't in "Taste of 'Oney."

Love that brass,
DubDub