# Perception of /zh/ phoneme by English native speakers



## hadronic

Hello, 
I read in an older thread here that someone, a native speaker  of English, was "thrilled" by some of the phonemes of French, that sound very foreign and noble to his ears. One of them was /zh/. 
I was wondering : /zh/ is not foreign to English by any means. Besides French loanwords (garage, massage, beige...), English has its own /zh/ from /z/ palatalization : leisure, pleasure, vision,... and in liaisons : it is /zh/ your... 
Granted, it's not a primary phoneme of English. But is it enough make it sound that foreign to the English ear ?


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## Hulalessar

What I think sounds foreign to English speakers' ears is when the sound occurs at the beginning of a word. The fact that the sound is not represented by a letter or established digraph like <sh> or <th> may also have something to do with it.


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## ahvalj

I was always amused how various English speakers struggle with the word _genre_.


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## Hulalessar

It is not unusual for people to have difficulty with consonants and consonant clusters which they may have in their own language other than in initial positions. English speakers have no problem with _cats_ but _tsar _becomes _zar_. Spanish speakers can say _España_, but many find _Spain _tricky. Italians have no problem with _Spain _because the Italian for _Spain _is _Spagna_.


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## sound shift

ahvalj said:


> I was always amused how various English speakers struggle with the word _genre_.


We must move in different circles: I don't recall hearing anyone struggle with this word.


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## theagx

hadronic said:


> and in liaisons : it is /zh/ your...



I've never heard that before, although I have heard it in Cockney accents with an /sh/.


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## ahvalj

sound shift said:


> We must move in different circles: I don't recall hearing anyone struggle with this word.


Well, everybody I have heard was able to pronounce _g _as _zh_, that's true, but problems arise with the optional nasalization of _en_ and with this final _re_. Some people try to preserve the frenchness of this word, whereas others tend to accommodate it to a more English pattern (there are no other words ending on -_rə_ as far as I know).


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## Ben Jamin

Hulalessar said:


> It is not unusual for people to have difficulty with consonants and consonant clusters which they may have in their own language other than in initial positions. English speakers have no problem with _cats_ but _tsar _becomes _zar_. Spanish speakers can say _España_, but many find _Spain _tricky. Italians have no problem with _Spain _because the Italian for _Spain _is _Spagna_.


Do you pronounce the "ts" in *cats *as a single sound?


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## Hulalessar

Ben Jamin said:


> Do you pronounce the "ts" in *cats *as a single sound?



Yes.


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## Ben Jamin

If I am not mistaken a *phoneme *is a sound that can form so called minimal pairs, other sounds are called *allophones*. I suspect that neither *zh* or *ts* sounds in English are phonemes. The same can be true with the *z *sound in Spanish, which exists as an allophone before *m*, but most Spaniards don't suspect its existence.


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## ahvalj

Ben Jamin said:


> If I am not mistaken a *phoneme *is a sound that can form so called minimal pairs, other sounds are called *allophones*. I suspect that neither *zh* or *ts* sounds in English are phonemes.


_beige_ [ʑ] — _page_ [ʥ]


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## Hulalessar

Ben Jamin said:


> If I am not mistaken a *phoneme *is a sound that can form so called minimal pairs, other sounds are called *allophones*. I suspect that neither *zh* or *ts* sounds in English are phonemes. The same can be true with the *z *sound in Spanish, which exists as an allophone before *m*, but most Spaniards don't suspect its existence.



The _ts_ at the end of _cats _is not considered a phoneme in English because it is analysed as_ t_ + plural marker _s,_ i.e. two distinct phonemes_.

_The sound _zh _clearly exists in English and must therefore either be a phoneme consisting of a single sound or the allophone of a phoneme. If it is an allophone of a phoneme there has to be at least one other allophone and an obvious candidate is its unvoiced counterpart_ sh_. The fact that there may be no minimal pairs is not conclusive. However, the fact that the sounds are not, unlike Spanish _s_ and _z_, found in complimentary distribution I think confirms that _zh_ must be a phoneme. (Is there any other test to decide whether two sounds are allophones of the same phoneme other than the common sense rule that two sounds articulated in completely different ways cannot be allophones of the same phoneme?)


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## ahvalj

Hulalessar said:


> If it is an allophone of a phoneme there has to be at least one other allophone and an obvious candidate is its unvoiced counterpart_ sh_. The fact that there may be no minimal pairs is not conclusive.


_station_ — _invasion_?


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## CapnPrep

[z] vs. [ʒ]: _bays_/_beige_, _closer_ ("someone who closes")/_closure_ (source)
[dʒ] vs. [ʒ]: _pledger_/_pleasure_, _ledger_/_leisure_ (BrE), _legion_/_lesion_ (source)


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## Hulalessar

ahvalj said:


> _station_ — _invasion_?



All the sounds in a word (or phrase) must be the same except one.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> _beige_ [ʑ] — _page_ [ʥ]


Do you really hear ʑ and dʑ? As a Russian you certainly have a finer ear for sibilants than I as a Western European have but I hear ʒ and dʒ as it is usually transcribed in dictionaries.


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## ahvalj

Hulalessar said:


> All the sounds in a word (or phrase) must be the same except one.


I don't think it has to be so strict. _Vision_ — _mission_ and _occasion_ — _location/vacation_ seem enough. The demand that all the sounds but one should be identical is valid when there is a possibility that this additional sound governs the appearance of the allophone under question, which is not so for _ʑ_, since we know the origin of all such words and know that the sound that has produced the English _ʑ_ was different from the sound that has produced the English _ɕ_ already in the source language (French).


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> Do you really hear ʑ and dʑ? As a Russian you certainly have a finer ear for sibilants than I as a Western European have but I hear ʒ and dʒ as it is usually transcribed in dictionaries.


Mea culpa, I didn't think about the distinction between _ʑ_ and _ʒ_: yes, the English sound is closer to the second variant. The same for _ɕ_ from my previous post.


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## hadronic

Ahvalj, I don't really understand your definition of phoneme. It has to be that only one sound changes. By definition of the notion of phoneme...
Doing this, you'll determine if it's a phoneme, and also its productivity ("rendement").
Minimal pairs with zh/z are extremely rare, so we can say that zh is a phoneme of English with extremely little productivity.

The question now is, should we rather analyze /zh/ as the realization of /zj/ in English ?
As a more global question, a lot of languages got their various hushing sounds (sh,zh,ch,dzh, _ɕ_, _ʑ_,...) from earlier palatalization of stops.
For some languages like Polish, the entire system is still very transparent (1st palatalization, 2nd palatalization, yod...).
So when do we start counting those sibilants as separate phonemes rather than the realization of a stop (or a "simple" fricative) plus palatalization ?

It seems to me at least for English, that even in native speaker's mind, /zh/ DOESN'T exist. It's just what gets out of their mouth when they attempt to produce a palatalized /z/. Same for me in French, the nasal vowels are NOT phonemes in my intimate perception of the languages. Regardless of the numerous minimal pairs like _beau / bon, bas / banc, baie / bain_ .... in my mind, it's just how it sounds out when I'm attempting to say [an] at the end of words or before another consonant.

Edit: thinking again, we do have  _pas / pan / panne, beau / bon / bonne, baie / bain / benne_ , that is to say, alternance between V, nasal V, and V + n , so now I'm confused , but the intimate perception that nasal vowels are not phonemes, is still valid..


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## Ben Jamin

hadronic said:


> Same for me in French, the nasal vowels are NOT phonemes in my intimate perception of the languages. Regardless of the numerous minimal pairs like _beau / bon, bas / banc, baie / bain_ .... in my mind, it's just how it sounds out when I'm attempting to say [an] at the end of words or before another consonant.


Would you think the same way if the spelling of French was different (like in Portuguese or Polish) or if you couldn't read?


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## Walshie79

The voiced post-alveolar sibilant ("zh sound") in British English is really just an allophone of the voiceless ("sh"); it only occurs in certain positions and between vowels. There isn't a minimal pair for all speakers (maybe "assure" vs "azure" for some, but the former usually has the "force" vowel and the latter often /zj/).

Garage always has an affricate at the end in BE, and usually rhymes with "marriage" not with "barrage". Anyone saying "ga-RAZH" would usually be assumed to be either French or American, or affecting a French pronunciation on purpose. As for producing the sound in other languages it is English speakers who often mispronounce French words in -tion and -sion with the sh and zh; French uses /sj/ and /zj/. This to me proves its an English allophone not a borrowed foreign sound- with the possible exception of "genre" which is increasingly becoming "John-ra" in Britain as it gets naturalized.


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## CapnPrep

hadronic said:


> The question now is, should we rather analyze /zh/ as the realization of /zj/ in English ? […]
> It seems to me at least for English, that even in native speaker's mind, /zh/ DOESN'T exist. It's just what gets out of their mouth when they attempt to produce a palatalized /z/.


So what would you say is the underlying form of _beige_ or _massage_, etc.? Would you say that /zj/ is a possible coda in English?


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## Walshie79

CapnPrep said:


> So what would you say is the underlying form of _beige_ or _massage_, etc.? Would you say that /zj/ is a possible coda in English?



No not /zj/, those words have the voiced affricate ("j sound") in British English, although you still hear beige pronounced as in French by some. Most French words with the zh sound eventually end up with this sound in English ("gender", "general", "age" etc); it is perceived as the closest native equivalent. To hear them with the English sound is a sign they are fully naturalized to me. 

The "zh"/"sh" allophony in English is primarily in word-medial position, and comes from a former /sj/-/zj/ one that formerly existed like in French today.


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## Hulalessar

hadronic said:


> The question now is, should we rather analyze /zh/ as the realization of /zj/ in English ?



I was going to suggest that until I remembered words like _genre_ and_ beige _which I do not think we can really leave out. The other snag is that /zj/ has become /zh/ just as /sj/ has become /sh/. /sh/ is not a problem because it exists in long established English words. Also, whilst we can say that there are only a comparatively few ways in which /zh/ can be represented in the orthography, the sound is not associated with a designated letter or digraph. I do not think that the influence of letters and digraphs on the perception of what sounds exist should be underestimated.


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## ahvalj

hadronic said:


> Ahvalj, I don't really understand your definition of phoneme. It has to be that only one sound changes. By definition of the notion of phoneme...
> Doing this, you'll determine if it's a phoneme, and also its productivity ("rendement").
> Minimal pairs with zh/z are extremely rare, so we can say that zh is a phoneme of English with extremely little productivity.
> 
> The question now is, should we rather analyze /zh/ as the realization of /zj/ in English ?
> As a more global question, a lot of languages got their various hushing sounds (sh,zh,ch,dzh, _ɕ_, _ʑ_,...) from earlier palatalization of stops.
> For some languages like Polish, the entire system is still very transparent (1st palatalization, 2nd palatalization, yod...).
> So when do we start counting those sibilants as separate phonemes rather than the realization of a stop (or a "simple" fricative) plus palatalization ?
> 
> It seems to me at least for English, that even in native speaker's mind, /zh/ DOESN'T exist. It's just what gets out of their mouth when they attempt to produce a palatalized /z/. Same for me in French, the nasal vowels are NOT phonemes in my intimate perception of the languages. Regardless of the numerous minimal pairs like _beau / bon, bas / banc, baie / bain_ .... in my mind, it's just how it sounds out when I'm attempting to say [an] at the end of words or before another consonant.
> 
> Edit: thinking again, we do have  _pas / pan / panne, beau / bon / bonne, baie / bain / benne_ , that is to say, alternance between V, nasal V, and V + n , so now I'm confused , but the intimate perception that nasal vowels are not phonemes, is still valid..


A phoneme is an theoretical concept aimed at simplifying the description of the phonetic system. Many people prefer to convert this description into highly abstract exercises, which is OK as long as it works for them, but is less suitable for people with more practical way of thinking. Remember, these are just models created for better understanding the complex facts of language, nothing more. 

The requirement that there should exist ideal word pairs differing in only one phoneme is redundant in my view, and as long as speakers clearly oppose two sounds in an identical position (_mission/vision_ or _assure/azure_ from the post #21), we can safely regard these sounds as separate phonemes. In case of this English phoneme pair, I have to repeat, we know that the sounds that have produced this opposition were separate in French, Latin and sometimes even as far as in Indo-European, so we have no reasons to worry that something unnoticed still governs their distribution in modern English.

The question whether _ʒ_ is a separate phoneme in modern English or an allophone of_ zj_ looks too abstract to me: since for some percent of speakers there is no synchronous variation between the former and the latter, I don't understand which practical advantages can we get by eliminating _ʒ_, other than the doubtful pleasure of having simplified the basic rule (i. e. the number of phonemes) while adding one more deduction (i. e. the underlying shift _zj_>_ʒ_).


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## sumelic

I wouldn't say that [ʒ] is the same as /zj/ in English. It's true that this is the historical origin of most occurrences of the sound, but there are also a great deal of semi-naturalized words such as those listed by CapnPrep where that is not the source of the sound. It's true that it sounds stereotypically "foreign" to the Anglophone ear (sometimes people use it even when the sound is an affricate in the original language, such as "Taj Mahal" and "Beijing"), but people are usually capable of pronouncing it.  It seems bizarre to me to consider it an allophone of /ʃ/; I don't know of any words that have that as the origin of the sound or that have an alternation between these two sounds. Some minimal pairs I looked up are "allusion-Aleutian", "confusion-Confucian", "mesher-measure" -- they aren't exactly common, but they're certainly not pronounced the same.

As a learner of French, I would say that the main reason native English speakers pronounce French /sj/-words with /ʃ/ is simply because of confusion due to the related words in English, not because we think of the [ʃ] sound as a combination of /sj/, or the [ʒ] sound as a combination of /zj/.  I'm American, so I don't have any sequences of coronal + /j/ in any ordinary words, but in foreign words people can usually pronounce this. For example, if somebody tried to pronounce, say, a Russian word transliterated as _zyat'_, people would probably attempt to use /zjɑt/ or if they find that too difficult to pronounce, /ziɑt/, but it wouldn't be pronounced as /ʒɑt/. So a clear difference can be heard and made.

I would say English speakers actually identify /ʒ/ most strongly with the phoneme /dʒ/, as a "softer" or more foreign-sounding version.


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