Minimal Pair List Vowels 2 and 19, / ɪ / and / eə / 29 pairs

Vowel / ɪ / is spelled <i> or <e> in beheaded and courses . The / eə / diphthong is <air>, <are>, <ear> in swear , or <ar> in Sarah .

The contrast is not a problem for any known group of learners.

Interesting pairs include:

beheaded bareheaded
filly fairly
sirrah Sarah

The mean density is very low 0.1%. The list makes 27 semantic contrast, giving a high loading of 93%.

beheaded bareheaded 
bid bared 
Billy barely
bin bairn 
  bins bairns 
biz bares 
chid chaired 
courses corsairs
did dared 
dint daren't 
filly fairly 
finis fairness 
fizz fairs 
hid hared 
his hairs 	   
his hares
id aired 
is airs 
kid cared 
kin cairn 
lid laird 
  lids lairds 
Liz lairs
Ms mares
sirrah Sarah 
skid scared 
squid squared 
swiz swears 
whiz wares 

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.