Minimal Pair List Consonants /ð/ versus /ʒ/, 2 pairs
The spelling of /ð/ is <th> or <the>. The /ʒ/ sound is spelled <ge> and <su>.
The contrast is between two voiced fricatives, fairly close in the mouth. Both sounds may be troublesome for learners, since there are many languages which do not have close equivalents. However, the contrast between them is so rare that it will not be a problem. The /ð/ sound can occur in any position in the syllable, but /ʒ/ only occurs finally or intervocalically, other than in foreign names or loan words such as
gendarme
. /ʒ/ is in any case a very rare phoneme, found in only 334 words in the source dictionary, and /ð/ is also fairly rare, occurring in only 593 words.
The figure for the mean density is 0.4%. The semantic loading is 100%.
leather leisure
bathe beige
.
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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.
