I think most of us can agree, English pronunciation vs spelling (vs conjugation) is strange:
Read (present tense)
Read (past tense)
Red (color)
Reed (plant)
contrast with
Lead (direct, present tense)
Led (direct, past tense)
Lead (the metal)
... however, I'm currently teaching Japanese students English, which generally makes no distinction between L
and R
-based sounds. Is there any similar set(s) of words I could use as an example that would avoid this potential confusion? I'm trying to make each sets' differences more obvious audibly. Ideally, new sets have some similarity/difference in different conjugations of a verb (something irregular); I'm hoping for "related" results. Probably, the stranger the better.
I speak (probably standard) North-West American English, if this makes a large difference.
EDIT:
To forestall too many questions about what sounds Japanese "natively" supports, here's the sounds usually used in transliteration to English. Note that everything ends in a vowel (whose sounds are constant, and pronounced identically as in Spanish). Not having a given sound doesn't mean it can't be heard - it just means that distinguishing between it and the "nearest neighbor" is difficult/impossible. I probably only need to replace one set, so something without an L
/R
sound is what I'm looking for.