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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The zh sound is not a natural one in English based on the root languages it came from. The ZH sound is closer to the S or Ch sounds.
People from other languages would hear a different sound base due to the fact they produce the sound combo using a mouth placement that is more natural in the native speech. This is the core of where a person’s accent comes from.
Another factor is, the printing press which set most of our letters in place came English just as we were going through a prononcation shift. So words would be spent differently than they sound and stayed that way longer than before due to written books being cheaper and around more.
Add in the 1700 and 1800 state of standardization which saw words being written not as they sound… but based on the language the root for them came from and you grow further and further from the sound in the mouth vs the written word.
The classic is don’t forget that “ye” is prounced “the”. The y in this case isn’t a y but an old letter that stood for the th sound. Over time other letters have slipped out of usage in English. The c for example use to sound more like the k sound but now lives in a soft s sound.
Bottom line is… English is not a phonetic language. It’s a construct language only. Which is why teaching it phonetically can be one of the dumbest ways to learn.
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