Minimal Pair List Consonants /ð/ versus /ʃ/, 13 pairs

Minimal pair: Consonants /ð/ versus /ʃ/, 13 pairs

The /ð/ sound is spelled with <th>. The /ʃ/ sound is spelled with <sh>.

This is a contrast between a voiced dental fricative and a voiceless sibilant, fairly close together in the mouth. The separate sounds may be a problem for learners, but the contrast is so infrequent that it hardly matters.

One taboo word pairing is that/shat .

Thanks to the rarity of the /ð/ sound, the mean density value is very low at 0.4%. The list makes 11 semantic distinctions, a loading of 85%.

 	
other usher
  others ushers
pother posher 
that shat 
thee she 
their share 
  theirs shares 
thine shine 
though show 
those shows 
thy shy 
with wish 
withies wishes

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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.