Um, I'm NOT trying to be mean, but these typically don't sound anything alike to native speakers, but are usually pronounced identically when learned as a 2nd language.
The firsts (beach & sheet) use "long 'e'," and the seconds (bitch & shit) use "short 'i'," in their pronunciations. The difficulty is that in most other languages, the "i" actually IS natively pronounced as an "ee" (long 'e') sound. So it's confusing. :smile:
As an example, I know many Russians that hear no difference between
beer, bear, pear, and beard
Continuing the thread:
pear, pair, pare