i felt all cool for knowing how the sound in mandarin that gets romanized as "zh" is pronounced, until someone told me that the one thing i ever said that included it is actually an exception that's pronounced differently

apparently shenzhen is just "first syllable of shenanigans, first syllable of jennifer" which is not what i was doing

@monorail Hm. I wonder how often "zh" is pronounced "dʒ" - it's that way in Xiran Jay Zhao's name, too.

@noelle @monorail technically it is /ʈʂ/ which is really the chinese way of saying /ʒ/ but china makes fricatives “voiced” by sticking a /t/ in front

@noelle @monorail by which i mean the difference between z and zh is the same in english and chinese it’s just that chinese z is actually /ts/

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@noelle @monorail (it sounds like /dz/ and /dʒ/ to english ears because they aren't aspirated (whereas c and ch are) but technically chinese does not voice any of its consonants [excepting nasals/liquids/semivowels])

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