The pronunciation equivalent is called a 'minimal pair' in linguistics. Two words that differ by a single sound, and they're pretty common.

The written equivalent is probably more common in most other languages than in English. English has a relatively 'deep' orthography compared to most languages, ie. the spelling makes no gosh darn sense.

An English example (when spoken) might be 'scanning' versus 'skinning', with very different implications. A vet might scan a dog, but hopefully they wouldn't skin one. I have no idea what 'skinning electron microscopy' could be, either!