Minimal Pair List Vowels 2 and 18, / ɪ / and / ɪə / 24 pairs

Vowel / ɪ / is generally spelled <i>, <y> or <ie>. The / ɪə / diphthong is <ia>, <ea>, <eer>, <ear> or <ier>.

The original search produced a great many extra pairs in which the / ɪə / was not a diphthong but was two syllables, such as airy/area or collie/collier . These were discarded since they really belong in the schwa versus null column, being made by adding the schwa to / ɪ /.

The only pairs with taboo words are piss/pierce and quiz/queers .

The mean density is very low at 0.1%. The list makes 19 semantic contrast, giving a high loading of 79%.

bid beard 
  bidding bearding 
  bids beards 
biz beers 
chid cheered 
cirrus serous
fizz fears 
his hears 
is ears
lid leered 
Liz leers
Millie merely
Ms meres
piss pierce 
  pissed pierced 
  pisses pierces 
  pissing piercing 
quid queered 
quiz queers 
rid reared 
rill real 
Sid seared
viz veers 
whiz weirs 

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.