The story of the Australian pig farmer whose livestock were decimated by
floods has been circulating on the Internet recently. A reporter misheard
him say that 'Thirty thousand pigs were floating down the river', and reported
it as such. In fact, what he had said was: 'Thirty sows and
pigs...'.
A nice example of how a minimal pair mistake can cause problems
even among native speakers.
Just to remind you, here's how minimal pairs are defined in The New
A-Z of ELT:
A minimal
pair is a pair of words which differ in meaning when only one sound (one phoneme)
is changed. Pair and bear are minimal pairs, since their
difference in meaning depends on the different pronunciation of their first sound: p versus b. However, pair and pear are
not minimal pairs, since, although they differ in meaning, they are pronounced
the same. Minimal pairs are widely used in pronunciation teaching to help
learners discriminate between sound contrasts, particularly those that don’t
exist in their L1, for the purposes of both recognition and production.
On the MA course I teach for The New School, I set the students a task in
which they describe how they might exploit this kind of minimal pairs activity
(from Baker 2006):
Here's my feedback on the task:
As I suggest, such activities may have limited usefulness. Indeed, does
anyone still do them?
Reference
Baker, A. (2006) Ship or sheep? (2nd edn). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.As I suggest, such activities may have limited usefulness. Indeed, does anyone still do them?