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

The /z/ sound is spelled with <s>, <se> or <z>. The /ʒ/ sound is spelled with <ge> or <su>.

This is a contrast between a sibilant fricative and an alveolar fricative, both voiced and fairly close together in the mouth. The only difference is the way the air is released, through a groove made by the tongue for /z/ and at the front of the tongue for /ʒ/. It can be a problem for many learners and some native speakers. Like the /s/ versus /ʃ/ distinction it is often used by actors to suggest the speech of somebody who is drunk, less often by novelists since the voiced /ʒ/ is hard to represent in normal orthography..

The mean density value is extremely low at 0.1%. The list makes 9 semantic distinctions, a loading of 81%.

 	
baize beige
brews Bruges 
Caesar seizure
composer composure
eraser erasure
  erasers erasures
liaise Liège 
loos luge
loses luges
rues rouge 
  ruses rouges 

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.