Minimal Pair List Vowels 12 and 14, /ə/ versus / aɪ / 22 pairs

The schwa has many spellings. The / aɪ / diphthong is spelled <iCe>, <y> and <i> in levis , and occurs in the letter name I .

This is a contrast between a short vowel which is always unstressed and a diphthong. It is not in itself a problem for learners. A number of the words with schwa are weak forms of grammar words.

Interesting pairs include:

philosophers philosophize
starlet starlight

The density figure is 0.3%. The set makes 19 semantic contrasts giving a loading of 86%.

a I 
acclamation acclimation
Allah ally
alumna alumni
carbon carbine 
  carbons carbines 
coalman coalmine  
coalmen coalmine
datum daytime
'em I'm
labour layby
  labours laybys
levers levis
philosophers philosophize
signallers signalize 
starlet starlight
the thy
to tie 
topography typography
turban turbine
  turbans turbines
westerners westernize

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.