Minimal pair: Difference between revisions
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*'abortion' and 'apportion' | *'abortion' and 'apportion' | ||
*'parole' and 'patrol' | *'parole' and 'patrol' | ||
*'inane' and 'innate' | |||
Spelling can disguise the fact of a minimal pair; some examples of this are: | Spelling can disguise the fact of a minimal pair; some examples of this are: | ||
Revision as of 22:52, 5 December 2008
In linguistics, two words differing by only one unit of sound, or phoneme, are called a minimal pair. Minimal pairs are widely used in language teaching. In English, typical examples are:
- 'cat' and 'mat'
- 'fish' and 'wish'
- 'abortion' and 'apportion'
- 'parole' and 'patrol'
- 'inane' and 'innate'
Spelling can disguise the fact of a minimal pair; some examples of this are:
- 'bane' and 'boon'
- 'league' and 'leak'
- 'do' and 'two'
- 'Evans' and 'heavens'
- 'boater' and 'voter'
- 'mosque' and 'musk'
- 'knows' and 'nose'
- 'loose' and 'lose', where the 'o' sound is the same 'oo', but the 's' is unvoiced in 'loose' and voiced in 'lose'