English words with two pronunciations

Solution 1:

Such words are 'strict homographs' (homographs but not homophones) -- words that are both homographs and homophones are homonyms. There are two reasons for their existence: 1) words that come from different sources (which may or may not start out being spelled the same). 2) words that represent the same lexeme but are given different accents to identify the part-of-speech.

Type 1 includes: bass, bow, lead, ... (there are not too many because they create ambiguity)

Type 2 includes: articulate, perfect, use, ... (there are many of these because they decrease ambiguity)