--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

> suzmccarth scripsit:
>
> > How about leisure and ledger?
>
> Those happen to have different vowels for me: /liZ@.../, /lEdZ@.../.

Well, I could say that for me they have the same vowel, but since
the Oxford Dictionary also indicates /lezr/ I would consider that dz
and z are different phonemes for some community of English speakers.
These words aren't recent loan words but belong to a pattern -
pleasure, treasure, leisure (for some of us anyway) and pledge,
ledge, hedge on the other hand.

> --

Suz