Phonology: Minimal Pairs 1.1

In this exercise, you will be asked to select which pair of words are ‘minimal pairs’, those that share all identical sounds except for one.

Minimal pairs are used to show which sounds in a language are distinctive. If exchanging one phoneme for another changes the meaning of a word, then we know that that sound is distinct and not an allophone of another.

For more information on minimal pairs and distinct phonemes, refer to the tutorial “The Basics of Phonology.”