A minimal pair is two words that differ by only one phoneme, or smallest meaningful sound unit. For example, "cat" and "fat" are a minimal pair because they only differ in their first sound. This document provides examples of several English consonant phoneme pairs, including /p/-/b/, /f/-/v/, /s/-/z/, and nasal consonants /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, and instructs the listener to identify the difference between sounds in examples words for each pair. The presentation was created by Doha Mohammad Abdelal and Sarah Sobhi Abu Qoura.

1. A minimal pair is two words
that differ in only one sound
“phoneme”..

2. A phoneme is the smallest meaningful sound
unit in a language.
A meaningful sound is one that will change one
word into another word. For example, the words
cat and fat are two different words, there is only
one sound that is different between the two
words - the first sound.
That means that the /k/ sound in cat and the /f/
sound in fat are two different phonemes.

3. /p/:plosive(stop), bilabial, voiceless
/b/:plosive, bilabial, voiced
ex.
Pears Bears
Pack Back
Peach Beach
listen

4. /f/: fricative, labio-dental, voiceless
/v/: fricative, labio-dental, voiced
ex.
Wife’s wives
fan
van
listen

5. /s/: fricative, alveolar, voiceless.
/z/: fricative, alveolar, voiced.
Ex.
Niece knees
ice eyes
listen

6. /m/: nasal, bilabial, voiced
/n/: nasal, alveolar, voiced
/ ŋ/: nasal, velar, voiced
ex.
Worn worm
thin
thing
listen

7. This presentation by/
Doha Mohammad Abdelal
2201101638
&
Sarah Sobhi Abu Qoura
220102179