In an email last week, I introduced the word “caveat” (a noun meaning “a warning or limiting condition”) to you and used it as an example to show that the English spelling/writing system is famously “opaque”—as in, there is no totally consistent correspondence between the letters and letter strings used to spell words in writing and the actual English phonemes (individual consonant and vowel sounds) they represent.
The “opacity” of the English spelling system is explained in much more detail in our “The Sounds of English” course, but I just want to share another real-life example today because a personal friend asked me about it recently.
Namely, my friend asked me to record the pronunciation of the word “nonchalant” for him.
“Nonchalant” is a common English adjective that means “indifferent” or “appearing calm and not particularly interested in something.” Here is a simple example sentence:
She gave a nonchalant shrug after I told her the news.
我告訴她這個消息後，她若無其事地聳了聳肩。
But the meaning and grammatical characteristics of the word are not the point today. Instead, I want to use it as another example to show that English spelling is famously opaque.
As I explained in the email about “caveat” last week, one of the primary reasons why the spelling of English words corresponds so inconsistently to English phonemes is that English has a lot of loanwords from other (usually historically related) languages that also use Roman letters in their writing systems.
These loanwords range from words that were borrowed into English long ago and have become integrated into common English vocabulary to words that are still totally “foreign” but are used as they are to express meaning in English.
Either way, loanwords often still retain their “original” spellings from their languages of origin and so do not fit into the English spelling-to-phoneme correspondence system (which is not totally consistent to start with), even when their pronunciations have gained English phonological characteristics.
For example, the word “nonchalant” (commonly /nɑnʃəˈlɑnt/ in the General American pronunciation or /ˈnɒn.ʃəl.ənt/ in the General British pronunciation) is a French loanword, and the letter string “ch” in it—which corresponds to the phoneme /tʃ/ (like in “church”) in a lot of English words otherwise—actually represents the phoneme /ʃ/ (like in “ship”) instead.
This is because, in the French spelling system, the letter string “ch” represents the sound /ʃ/.
As such, if you were not aware of the French etymological origins of the English word “nonchalant” and did not look up its pronunciation with IPA, you would probably wrongly assume that the “ch” represents /tʃ/ (like in “church”) and mispronounce the word.
This, again, shows us that, if you want to be 100% certain how a new English word is pronounced, you ought to have a basic understanding of English phonemes and their corresponding one-to-one IPA symbols and then look up each word’s IPA transcription.
Incidentally, my English name “Charlotte” is also French in origin—and the “ch” letter string in it, like in “nonchalant,” represents the consonant /ʃ/ (“ship”) instead of /tʃ/ (“church”).
When you encounter French loanwords in English with the letter string “ch” in the future, remember to keep this in mind—or just look up the word to be 100% certain.
在上星期的一封電郵中，我跟大家介紹了 caveat 這個字（一個意思是「附帶限制條件」的名詞），並用了這個字作例子，說明英文的 spelling／書寫系統是出了名地 opaque（不透明）的——也就是說，我們用來拼寫英文字的字母及字母串，跟它們實際代表的英文 phonemes（音素，即英文個別的子音和母音）之間，並沒有真正完全一致的對應關係。
我們的《The Sounds of English》課程有更詳細解釋英文 spelling 系統的「不透明」，但今天我想再分享一個生活中的例子，因為最近剛好有一位朋友問到我。
這位朋友請我錄下 nonchalant 這個英文字的讀音給他聽。
Nonchalant 是一個常見的英文形容詞，意思是「漠不關心的」，或「表現得平靜、像對某件事沒有特別感興趣的」。以下是一個簡單例句：
She gave a nonchalant shrug after I told her the news.
我告訴她這個消息後，她若無其事地聳了聳肩。
不過，這個字的意思和文法特徵並不是今天的重點。我想用它作為另一個例子，說明英文的 spelling 是出了名地不透明的。
正如我在上星期關於 caveat 的電郵中解釋，英文字的拼寫跟英文音素之間的對應關係這麼不一致，其中一個主要原因，就是英文有很多從其他（多數是有親戚關係的）語言借入的字，而這些語言同樣使用羅馬字母作為書寫系統。
這些借字，有些在很久以前就已經進入英文，已演變成為常見英文詞彙的一部分；有些則仍然是完完全全的「外語詞彙」，但我們會直接用它們原本的樣子，在英文中表達意思。
無論是哪一種情況，借字往往仍然保留了它們在來源語言中的「原本」拼寫方式，所以即使它們的讀音已經演變成具有英文語音特徵，拼寫仍然不符合英文的拼寫與音素對應系統（而這套系統本身就已經不是完全一致的）。
例如，nonchalant 這個字（一般美國口音發音是 /nɑnʃəˈlɑnt/，一般英國口音發音則為 /ˈnɒn.ʃəl.ənt/）是一個法文借字。當中的字母串 ch，在很多其他英文字中代表的是音素 /tʃ/（就像 church 中一樣），但在這個字中，代表的卻是音素 /ʃ/（就像 ship 中一樣）。
這是因為，在法文的書寫系統中，字母串 ch 代表的是 /ʃ/ 這個音。
因此，如果你不知道 nonchalant 這個英文字的法文字源，也沒有透過 IPA 查清楚它的讀音，就很可能會錯誤地以為當中的 ch 代表 /tʃ/（就像 church 中一樣），因而把這個字讀錯。
這再次說明，如果你想百分之百確定一個新的英文字應該怎樣讀，就應該對英文音素，以及跟它們一對一對應的 IPA 符號有基本認識，然後查清楚每個字的 IPA 標音。
順帶一提，我的英文名 Charlotte 也是來自法文的——而當中的字母串 ch，也跟 nonchalant 一樣，代表的是子音 /ʃ/（ship），而不是 /tʃ/（church）。
以後遇到有 ch 這個字母串的英文法文借字時，記得留意這一點——或者直接查清楚這個字的讀音，就可以百分之百確定。