Shorts: Minimal Pairs

'Minimal Pairs' is a concept that I've encountered in a Phonetics class. It's what you get when there are two words with only ONE difference between them. In the class, it refers to a difference in sounds. For example, look at 'ojisan' and 'ojiisan' in Japanese, where the length of the middle vowel determines whether I'm talking about someone's uncle of grandfather (I nicked the example from the class. If I got it wrong, blame the lecturer). We can see it (er, hear it) in spoken English in words like 'convict', where the stress on the first or second syllable makes a different between a verb or a noun. Indeed, there's another example in 'have': "I have very pretty flowers (hav); I have to go water them (haff)." Neither 'have' or 'convict' are true examples though - the pronunciation shifts with context. I would never expect 'haff' to go in front of a noun unless the speaker had a German accent. Still, it can be a bit confusing is complicated sentence.

Anyway. I was thinking about how the concept of 'minimal pairs' relates in other areas, and, in written English, it is very important. There are many words of wildly differing meanings that have a difference of only one letter.

complimentary ("you're sweet") - complementary (sweet and sour)

manager (one who manages) - manger (wooden box for feeding herbivores)

form (shape) - from (preposition)

too (also) - two (one plus one)

angle (corner) - angel (messenger of heaven)

decide (choose) - deicide (god-killer!)

The scary one for me is:

prescriptive ("Yes, do this") - proscriptive ("Don't do this!")