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In phonology, 'minimal pairs' are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have a distinct meaning. They are used to demonstrate that two phones constitute two separate phonemes in the language.
As an example for English vowels, the pair "l'e't" + "l'i't" proves that the phones (in l'e't) and (in l'i't) do in fact represent distinct phonemes and . An example for English consonants is the minimal pair of "'p'at" + "'b'at". In phonetics, this pair, like any other, differs in number of ways. In this case, the contrast appears largely to be conveyed with a difference in the voice onset time of the initial consonant as the configuration of the mouth is same for and ; however, there is also a possible difference in duration, which visual analysis using high quality video supports.
Phonemic differentiation may vary between different dialects of a language, so that a particular minimal pair in one accent is a pair of homophones in another. This does not necessarily mean that one of the phonemes is absent in the homonym accent; merely that it is not present in the same range of contexts.

Contents

Examples

Differentiations in English

Differentiating consonants with same location and manner of articulation

Differentiating vowels

Differentiating consonants

Differentiating chronemes

Differentiating tonemes

Differentiating stress

External links

Examples

Differentiations in English

Following pairs prove existence of various distinct phonemes in English.

word 1	word 2	IPA 1	IPA 2	note
pin	bin			initial consonant
rot	lot
zeal	seal
bin	bean	/		vowel
pen	pan	/
hat	had			final consonant

Differentiating consonants with same location and manner of articulation

In the articulation of bilabial plosives, 4 phones are defined by the characteristics voiced/unvoiced and aspirated/unaspirated: , , and . In different languages only some of these may occur and the number of phonemes formed may be different again.

Pattern	Language(s)	Explanation
	English	Phones as in "spin" and as in "pin" both occur, but are allophones of the phoneme and no minimal pair can be found to distinguish them, but the word "bin" shows that the phone forms a phoneme separate from .
	Mandarin	Only phones (and phonemes) and occur. In the Pinyin transcription is written "p" and is written "b" (using the two available Latin letters for the two phonemes).
	French	In romance languages and other European languages only phones (and phonemes) and occur.
	Hindi/Urdu	All four phones are separate phonemes.
	Thai	Three phones occur and form three phonemes, as in these examples: ★ ใบ "sheet" ★ ไป "to go" ★ ภัย "danger"

Differentiating vowels

The following table shows a minimal set in French distinguishing vowels, some or all of which may sound alike to an Anglophone, because the and sounds do not exist in English:

word	IPA	meaning
cire		wax
sûre		sure
sœur		sister
sieur		sir
sueur		sweat

Differentiating consonants

A minimal triplet of consonants in French is:

word	IPA	meaning
bête noire		black beast, pet peeve
baie noire		black berry (not blackberry, which is mûre sauvage)
baignoire		bathtub

Because is not a single phoneme in French, this shows a minimal pair between the presence and absence of next to , which shares its point of articulation. and differ only in point of articulation.
There are three verbs in Hebrew which demonstrate the distinction, in some dialects, between a velar stop and an uvular stop on one hand, and a glottal stop with and without tightening of the throat on the other:

word	IPA	meaning
קרא		read, call
קרע		tear apart
כרע		kneel

In the following two Hebrew verbs, the only distinction is a glottal stop in the middle of the first word:

word	IPA	meaning
לראות		see
לירות		shoot

In Korean, phones in "Ko'r'ea' and in "Seou'l'" are allophones of one phoneme and are perceived by native speakers of Korean as a single phoneme. The difference is that is an allophone of this phoneme before vowels.
In Spanish, and are both allophones of . appears only before voiced consonants as in ''mismo'' .

Differentiating chronemes

Hungarian and Italian have distinctive length of consonants, as did Latin. A differentiator for length may be called a chroneme. In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), lengthening can be indicated by doubling the symbol, or by the special sign . Doubling is commonly used for consonants, while the special symbol is used for vowels. E.g. in Italian:

word	IPA	meaning
pala		spade
palla		ball

Hungarian, German and Thai have distinctive vowel length, as did Latin. E.g. in Thai (and compare this example also to the one on tone):

word	IPA	RTGS	quality	meaning
เขา		khǎo	short, rising tone	he/she
ขาว		khǎo	long, rising tone	white
เข้า		khâo	short, falling tone	enter
ข้าว		khâo	long, falling tone	rice
เข่า		khào	short, low tone	knee
ข่าว		khào	long, low tone	news

Differentiating tonemes

Languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Thai and many African languages. (See: pitch accent and tonal language.) For example in Thai:

word	IPA	RTGS	quality	meaning
ขาว		khǎ:o	rising tone	white
ข้าว		khâ:o	falling tone	rice
ข่าว		khà:o	low tone	news

Differentiating stress

Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Italian have many minimal pairs differing only in stress. Dutch has several, e.g. (stress indicated by acute accent):

language	word	IPA	meaning
Dutch	voorkómen		prevent
Dutch	vóórkomen		occur
Romanian	copíi		children
Romanian	cópii		copies
Portuguese	andarão		will walk
Portuguese	andaram		walked
Italian	becchino		undertaker
Italian	becchino		let them peck
Spanish	límite		(the) limit
Spanish	limite		he/she limits, you (formal) limit
Spanish	limité		I limited

Minimal pairs may differ superficially in more than one place if one feature is dependent on the other.
For example, English ''record'' (noun) and ''record'' (verb) (and similar pairs) appear superficially not to be minimal pairs for stress because they differ in vowel quality as well. However, since the differences in vowel quality are predictable consequences of the differences in stress, such pairs are considered minimal pairs. The case is similar in Russian, eg. ''м'у'ка'' ('torture, pain') and ''мук'а''' ('flour').

External links

★ Software that generates a list of minimal pairs from a wordlist

★ Consonant Contrasts Australian English (non-rhotic) Minimal Pair Words and Pictures from Caroline Bowen. Most of these will "work" in other dialects of English.

★ Vowel and Diphthong Contrasts: Australian English (non-rhotic) Minimal Pair Words and Pictures from Caroline Bowen. Most of these will "work" in other dialects of English.

★ Picturable Minimal Pairs ... ... and other word lists (without pictures) in English from Caroline Bowen.

★ Phonological Therapy Speech-Language Pathologists' intervention "tricks" and techniques involving minimal pairs - Words and Pictures from Caroline Bowen

★ Freebies Index Many words and pictures: singleton consonant lists, revisions and repairs, minimal pairs, etc from Caroline Bowen