Minimal Pair List Vowels 11 and 12, /3/ versus / ə / 8 pairs

The /3/ vowel is spelled in many ways including <eu>, <er>, <ur> and <or>. The schwa is always unstressed and can also be spelled in many different ways. Notice the homograph of divers , contrasting the archaic adjective with the plural noun. I am not sure that the distinction would be made by the majority of native speakers, but this dictionary records it.

This is a contrast between a long vowel and the schwa. They are almost identical in tongue positions, so are normally distinguished by prominence or stress. Very few pairs were found in the dictionary search, and most of these would cause no trouble, except perhaps for the very first one.

The density figure is too small to be worth calculating.

chauffeuse chauffeurs 
curs cos 
divers divers
earn 'un 
foreword forward
  forewords forwards
ugh a
upturn Upton 

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.