Why are there almost no words in English containing the letter combination “zh”, despite the fact that that the sound is quite common, e.g. “measure”?
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It’s all about where that sound comes from, historically. As many comments have pointed out, almost all instances of /ʒ/ (or “zh” as you write it) are written with an S. That’s no coincidence. Have you ever thought it was weird that “s-i-o-n” and “t-i-o-n” are pronounced “zhun” and “shun”? That’s certainly not what the letters would appear to be saying. You might expect those to sound like “syun” or “tyun” (assuming you’re comfortable with turning unstressed consonants into /ə/ – the vowel in “dumb”, which is super common in English).
And actually, they WERE said like “syun” and “tyun”, but as it turns out, English speakers really hate that Y sound in the middle of their words. So they take the /j/ (the first sound in “yellow”. I know, using a j is confusing but these symbols are international) sound and basically combine it into the preceding consonant. We can see that in tons of examples:
– Statue: Statyu? More like Stachu.
– Mission: Misyun? More like Mishun.
– Leisure: Leezyur? More like Leezhur.
– Vision: Vizyin? More like Vizhun.
– YouTube: Yootoob? More like Yoochoob.
“But wait!” You might be thinking. “That last one isn’t right! I say ‘Yootoob’ like it’s written!” If so, congrats, you’re probably American. But much of Britain now says “Yoochoob”, which is just the next in a long line of slow morphs in the English language. Because in ~~the British accent~~ (can’t believe I actually wrote that, I should know better) *certain British accents*, it would typically be “Yootyoob”, and there’s that pesky middle Y again that we hate so much. The fact is, pronunciation changes a lot faster than spelling, especially in a world as modernized as this one.
There’s a really nice video on the topic from Dr. Geoff Lindsay [here](https://youtu.be/RRs103ETh2Q). I’m always happy to recommend his videos for linguistic questions, dude is a genius. He covers the “ch” case, rather than the “zh” case, but it’s got virtually identical reasoning.
Oh, and PS: as another commenter mentioned, “zh” is most common in transcribing Chinese languages, it’s fairly modern. China uses that sound in places that couldn’t possibly have combined with the /j/ sound, like “Zhang”. I challenge you to find an English word without Chinese origins that has the “zha” *(to clarify, I’d be interested in specifically /ʒæ/, like the middle of the phrase “beige axe”. Several people have already given examples of /ʒʌ/ and /ʒa/)* sound in it (and no cheating, the “dzha” in words like “jab” doesn’t count). Maybe if English had developed with more Chinese influence, “zh” would be more common.
Update: several people, more knowledgeable about Mandarin pinyin than I, have informed me that the above usage of ZH does not correlate well at all with the English phoneme /ʒ/. Now that’s gotten me curious, whether English speakers just slowly mutated the /ʈʂ/ it represents into /ʒ/ (which feels weird, since it’s much more in line with the English CH sound /tʃ/) or if that association of the letters ZH came from a completely different source and Mandarin has nothing to do with it. Any literary historians or transliterators who know more about this, please share with the class!
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