Even better: either (“either one is fine”) and ether (“They put him to sleep with ether.”) Same sounds otherwise, but the difference in the “th” means a different word.
Ooh, nice. I’d been wracking my brain trying to think of a minimal pair that good.
From what I’ve read there is a certain age after which the ability to learn language without an “accent” goes down.
Usually it’s around ten. They have looked at Chinese, Korean and Japanese, who learn English and most of them have trouble with the letter “R”. But Chinese, Japanese or Koreans who learn English when they are younger than ten generally have no trouble saying words with “R” like a native speaker.
It’s pretty hard to learn a foreign language as an adult without an accent, though certain people have done it and the rules are not hard and fast
Ooo…that’s the perfect example I was trying to hunt down!
Might some of the problem in communicating this come from differences in regional accents? The London/Cockney thing above is just one example of how English pronunciation can vary significantly from one region/dialect to another.
I wonder if this could be regional – around here they replace the "th"most of the time with a sort of softened “d” sound. I sang for a time with a gospel choir here and to my american ear the sound of 45 (brabantse) dutch voices singing “I’m going to send thee three by three” in close harmony was…um…startling.
It certainly made me feel better about my pronunciation of the word “huurtuin”. Also the word for onion which I refuse to say out loud. With no supporting consonants it always comes out wrong. And did I mention Scheveningen? No, no I did not.
I gotta know now too- I’ve tried and found it impossible to create anything remotely resembling a th without touching teeth. (meaning the tip of the tongue to the teeth). Do you speak with a thick accent?
While we’re rounding up minimal pairs, let me also suggest thigh/thy.
What is so difficult about the Spanish soft r, that foreigners always make every single Spanish r (be it r or rr) sound like they think they’re an over-revved car?
Sometimes, a th sounds to me as almost-a-z, sometimes almost-a-d, sometimes it’s in between… and it changes depending on where the speaker is from. So yeah, dat’s one sound I don’t zink I’ll ever get rait.
With her. Wither.
You’re the perfect person to ask, then. Put the tip of your tongue between your teeth such that it is being touched by both the upper and lower teeth. Now expel breath throught that constricted area. What sound is produced?
(Yes, I know there are two th sounds, but let’s set that aside for the moment.)
Both voiced in my dialect.
Okely dokely.
This was mentioned before, but it got lost in other examples:
**Then. Thin.** The vowels are pronounced the same -- at least in my dialect. It's the "th" sounds that make the difference.
Is it true that native Spanish speakers have difficulty with “ng” sounds?
Did you ever try going to the Gemeente and asking for a “huursubsidie”? I assume your pronunciation was closer to “hoersubsidie”, so asking for them to subsidize your whoring would probably not have gone over well. 
Not the same vowel in my dialect, I’m afraid. Thy/thigh is the best minimal pair, I reckon, because I can’t imagine those two words being pronounced differently anywhere (apart from the th, of course).
I was thinking about this last night, and this is the word pair that made me realize that I do hear the difference. I think I was trying too hard yesterday.
Thy thigh 
I am en-farking-raged that I did not think of this, and I shall be avenged. Expect many dozens of deliveries of chinese food ere the weekend is through, bishop.