Minimal Pair List Vowels 3 and 19, /e/ versus / eə / 30 pairs

The /e/ vowel is spelled <e> and <ea> in dead . The diphthong / eə / is spelled <air>, <are> or <ar> in vary .

Although this is a contrast bewteen a short front vowel and a front centring diphthong, the two sounds begin in almost the same place and confusions occur even among native speakers. This applies particularly before /r/ as in ferry/fairy

The density value is 0.5%. The pairs make 26 semantic contrasts, giving a high loading of 87%.

bed bared 
belly barely 
ben bairn
  bens bairns 
bled blared 
cherry chary 
dead dared 
dent daren't 
Des dares
Ed aired
Fed fared
ferry fairy 
  ferries fairies 
fez fairs 
fled flared 
head hared 
herring haring 
ken cairn
  kens cairns 
lead laird 
  leads lairds 
Les lairs
merry Mary 
Pres prayers
shed shared 
sped spared 
stead stared 
very vary
wed wared 
wherry wary 

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.