Minimal Pair List Vowels 4 and 20, /æ/ versus / ʊə / 9 pairs
The /æ/ vowel is spelled <a> followed by two consonants or by one consonant in a monosyllable. The /
ʊə
/ diphthong is spelled <our> or <ur> in
lured
.
This contrast is between a short vowel and a diphthong well separated in the mouth, so it should cause no problems.
The density value is low at 0.85%. The pairs make 7 semantic contrasts, giving a high loading of 78.8%, not significant with such a short list.
bass bourse
dally dourly
gad gourd
gads gourds
harry houri
harries houris
lad lured
mad moored
pally poorly
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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.
