Minimal Pair List Vowels 3 and 20, /e/ versus / ʊə / 11 pairs

The /e/ vowel is spelled <e> throughout. The diphthong / ʊə / is spelled <our>, <oor> or <ur> in jury . The pair congress/congruous is of doubtful status since congruous would normally be perceived as a three-syllable word in which / ʊə / is two vowels and not a diphthong. This dictionary gives / bʊən / as the preferred pronunciation of bourne , though another common pronunciation is / bɔn /.

This is a contrast bewteen a short front vowel and a back centring diphthong, and is no rpblem for any learner.

The mean density is low at 0.2%. The pairs make 9 semantic contrasts, giving a high loading of 82%.

ben bourn
  bens bournes
Bess bourse
congress congruous
Delhi dourly
jerry jury
  jerries juries
lead lured
Les lures
Med moored
Ted toured

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.