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RE: Collab with @clayboyn: Photography and Philosophy
I don't think the think the development of similar sounding words that have different meanings is intentional. I think it's a combination of coincidences, mistakes, misunderstandings, interpretations, etc that produce the words we have. Just like it's a funny coincidence that impossible can spell I'm possible.
It fascinates me how differently people answered that question. The one I thought of putting in there but didn't, and instead keep mentioning here in the comment section is a word you happened to use- spell. Though in the case of that word the spelling is the exact same. Spell/spelling as an incantation associated with magic, sorcery witchcraft. And spell/spelling the order in which we put these symbols of letters together. Odd coincidence, that.
Spell is an interesting example. Having lived abroad for a while now and watching the way English gets adapted into Japanese, I fired from the hip with my comment yesterday. Having read your comment thread and thinking about it a little more, the need to speak in codes would definitely promote an intentional affiliation of deifferent meanings to certain words, as you said eye and I. On a large scale, though, I think the way words are adopted into mainstream language from different regions and small groups depends a lot on chance. So, even if there is intention at some point, eventually, I think that largely loses out in the end to luck and chance.
So many words in Japanese these days, like English, come from French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese, etc. and in many cases, because they are written with specific characters, people here assume they're origins are English. I often get asked what such and such a word means and I have no idea because it's actually not an English word.