266 START /ɑː/ “fast” vs NURSE /əː/ “first” Phrases (with minimal pairs not necessarily in the order /ɑː/ - /əː/) 1 pass the purse 2 hardly heard 3 my heart hurts 4 yearned for yarn 5 car parking perks 6 the first is the fastest 7 the castwas cursed 8 the barn burned down
Sentences (with minimal pairs not necessarily in the order /ɑː/ - /əː/)
1 His father’s firmowned a few farms further away. 2 Carly gave birth to a curly-haired girl in the city of Bath. 3 Mark thought it was a lark to lurk around murky street corners. 4 His clothes became dirty after darting through the fir trees to get far away. 5 The parson was well-versed and vastly experienced in dealing with personal problems.
6 While I was having a perm, someone was causing quite a stir by reading palms and predicting their fortune from the stars.
Now practise with the NORTH-NURSE or the TRAP-START reading passage