Phonology: Minimal Pairs 1.2

In this exercise, you will have more practice with ‘minimal pairs’, those that share all identical sounds except 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. The speaker is aware which sounds exist in his/her language. For more information on minimal pairs and distinct phonemes, click here to access the tutorial “The Basics of Phonology.”