Minimal Pair List Vowels 2 and 20, / ɪ / and / ʊə / 9 pairs
Vowel /
ɪ
/ is here spelled <i>. The /
ʊə
/ diphthong is <oor>, <our> or <ure>. This dictionary has /
bʊən
/ as the only pronunciation of
bourn
(meaning stream or boundary). Other dictionaries give that as an alternative to /bɔn/, which would make the word a homophone of
born
, reducing the number of minimal pairs to 5.
The contrast is not a problem for any known group of learners.
The mean density is insignifcant at 0%. There are 8 semantic distinctions, making for a loading of 86%, or 100% if
bourn
is excluded.
bin bourn
bins bourns
biz boors
krill crewel
krill cruel
lid lured
Liz lures
mid moored
Ms Moors
July 2014
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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.
