Minimal pairs practice

Listening comes before speaking. If you cannot reliably hear the difference between two words, you cannot reliably produce it either, and practising your own pronunciation will not help until the contrast is audible to you.

Work in this order: play both words of a pair and listen for the difference. Then have someone play one at random and see whether you can name it — the listening quiz does exactly this. Only once you score consistently should you start producing the pair yourself.

The contrasts that are hard depend on your first language, because you only struggle with distinctions your own language does not make.

Speakers of Japanese and Korean typically work hardest on /r/ and /l/. Spanish and Italian speakers often work on /ɪ/ and /iː/, since their vowel system has one sound where English has two. Speakers of French, German, Russian and many others work on /θ/ and /ð/, which few languages have. Speakers of Hindi and other South Asian languages often focus on /v/ and /w/.

Test yourself on a few pairs from each group above; whichever you get wrong is where your practice time belongs.

Every word above is a button. Set the accent and voice you want on the main screen, then come back — the guides use whatever you chose. To hear two accents against each other, use Compare; to test whether you can actually hear a contrast, use the listening quiz.