Minimal Pair List Consonants /ʒ/ versus /ʤ/, 2 pairs
Only one pair was identified in the main list and another was supplied by Ben Holmberg, although there might be more if one extends the search into rarer loan words, such as
jupe/dupe
. Obviously the contrast is not a problem for learners though the sounds are very similar.
lesion legion
leisure ledger
Barbara Bevington has pointed out to me that there is an additional pair for
speakers of American English:
version virgin
.
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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.
