The difference is that English words don't really change meanings based on pronunciation. Words do have many pronunciations, but the meaning remains the same.
This is often true, but far from universal. Oftentimes there are differences in verb and noun (as with "lead" and "lead"), or transitive vs. intransitive verbs ("seconded"), but occasionally we have problems with two nouns or two verbs with the same form:
"I read that magazine": do I mean regularly, or that I have done in the past?
"The messenger wrote down Lincoln's address": was that his home, or his speech?
The context would need to be quite explicit to work around problems such as this.
You are thinking of the written language as the fundamental thing. Actually spoken language is fundamental, and writing is an imperfect representation of it.
The verb "lead" and the noun "lead" (i.e., the metal) are two different words, pronounced differently. The fact that they are spelled the same is just an example of how the English writing system doesn't encode the English language perfectly accurately.