Minimal Pair List Diphthong /ʊə/ versus null, 4 pairs
The /ʊə/ sound is spelled with <u> or <ur>.
As /ʊə/ is fairly rare, only occurring in 1053 words in the dictionary, this was a fairly easy list to work out manually. Since the diphthong is often preceded by a palatal semivowel /j/, there turned out to be very few pairing words when one deleted it. For example, in the pairs
annuals/annals
and
furies/frizz
, I have actually deleted /jʊə/ rather than /ʊə/, but I left these pairs in as they seemed interesting.
The density value and semantic loading are irrelevant with such a small and contentious list.
annuals annals
furies frizz
touring Tring
Urdu do
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John Higgins
John Higgins retired in 2000, having spent the bulk of his career as a British Council English Language Officer working in Thailand, Turkey, Egypt and Yugoslavia and the last fifteen years in lectureships at Bristol University and then running an M.Sc. programme at Stirling University. His main field was EFL, with a special interest in CALL (computer-assisted language learning) in which, together with Tim Johns of Birmingham, he was responsible for important developments in methods and materials.
His publications include A Guide to Language Laboratory Material Writing, Universitetesforlaget, 1969, Computers and Language Learning, Collins, 1984, Language Learners and Computers, Longman, 1988, and Computers in English Language Learning, Intellect Press, 1992, together with numerous papers, reviews and pieces of software. He maintains a web page on minimal pairs and homographs for teachers of English pronunciation skills.
