Japanese is full of homonyms. English is too but I wonder who has more? Japanese has a rather small sound pallette, so it's full of words that sound different to native speakers, but very alike to my Western ears. Plus, there are many similar sounding words, where you have to differentiate between "go" and gou" or "kyu" and "kyuu". One of the first I remember was:顔ーKao：Face ＆ 買うーKau－To Buy
Above, the meanings are different, but with some words the meanings are similar or even more confounding, near antonyms! For example, if you are in Japan and anywhere near a baby, you will hear a steady stream of :
かわいい！-Kawaii! Cute!! Originally my pronunciation was so bad it was easily confused with:
怖い! -Kowai! Scary! Not a nice thing to call a baby, especially if you are an American trying to make a good impression. To exacerbate the situation, another common expression for pathetic or sad (think "Aww, poor thing") is：
かわいそう -Kawaisou. I originally thought this was an expression consisting of:
Kawaii(cute) + Sou (seeming). And it is, but a not the same Kawaii (different Kanji)! Look at this:
可愛いーCute
可哀そう-Pathetic
It became easier when I realized nobody says "Seems Cute!!", as that kind of implies that upon further inspection, perhaps it's not. ("~Sou" is used a lot for food that looks good, but the speaker has no idea if it is or not.) Again, this isn't something you would say about a baby. You would just say, "Cute!", obviously.