Minimal Pair List Consonants /s/ versus /ʒ/, 11 pairs

The spelling of /s/ is <s> or <ce>. The /ʒ/ sound is spelled <ge>, <su> and <j> where it ocurs initially in the loan word jabot .

The contrast is between two fricatives, one voiceless and one voiced but fairly close in the mouth. The /ʒ/ sound may be troublesome for learners, since there are many languages which do not have a close equivalent. However, the contrast between the two is so rare that it will probably not be a problem.

The huge discrepancy in frequency, with /s/ nearly 100 times more common than /ʒ/, means that the figure for the mean density is only 0.1%. The set makes 8 semantic contrasts, a loading of 74%.

base beige
Bruce Bruges
closer closure
lesser leisure 
loose luge
  looses luges
Messrs measures
person Persian
  persons Persians
sabot jabot 
  sabots jabots 

July

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.