The letter 'J' usually represents the sound /ʒ/ in French. In English this sound is most often represented by the letter 'S'. A large number of the words that have this sound in actually came to us from Old French. Many of them end in -sure. Here are some examples:
- leisure, treasure, pleasure. closure, exposure, seizure (yes, that last one is spelled with a 'Z'!)
There are also many nouns originally from Latin which came to us from old French which end in sion. These endings are pronounced /ʒn/. Here are some examples of these:
- abrasion, adhesion, version, , allusion, aversion, circumcision, cohesion, collision, collusion, conclusion, confusion, conversion, corrosion, decision, delusion, derision, erosion, evasion, exclusion, explosion, fusion, infusion ...
There are also two adjectives ending -sual which usually have the /ʒ/ sound; casual and visual.
Lastly there are many words from ancient Greek with the ending -sia, often pronounced /ʒə/. Here are some examples of some of these:
- ambrosia, amnesia, kinesthesia, euthanasia, synaesthesia
The /ʒ/ sound is actually the rarest consonant sound in English. It nearly always occurs in the middle of a word. There is only one common noun in English ( - so I was told at university) which begins with the sound /ʒ/. This is the word /ʒɒnrə/, "genre".
Hope this is helpful!
Your question is not silly.
Both words you've mentioned have two syllables or sounds.
Each syllable in English contains a vowel or a letter that gives a vowel sound. Some syllables are very short and quiet ( we call this sound minor stress because we hardly hear it).
Often we cant sound a syllable clearly because it has a very short/low (unstressed) sound we call schwa'but it is still a vowel.
The word castle can be divided into two syllables = cast + le
Notice each syllable contains a vowel
The word seven also has two syllables = sev+ en
Notice both syllables have a vowel .
Now look at this word: photography.
This word has four syllables and each syllable can be seen if we break it up to see on this page.
Ex pho to gra phy
This has four syllables but the last doesn't have a vowel. However it does contain a vowel sound (from the y).
The word Canada has three syllables = Ca na da.
Each syllable does contain a vowel as seen on paper, but the last sound is hardly pronounced (this is unstressed and doesn't sound like a vowel , so be careful).
One silly way to count out syllables and to find which sounds are major or minor is to pronounce the word as if you are calling your dog back.
Source Teaching American English Pronunciation by Peter Avery/ Susan Ehrlich
Best Answer
You ask is it "suitable". It does have a purpose, but may not be suitable for you.
English is sometimes taught (to young native speakers) as having long and short vowel sounds, for example the "short a" [æ] in "ban" compared with the "long a" [eɪ] in "bane". You will notice that the "long a" isn't at all a longer version of the short a, but a dipthong. However the concept is useful when learning spelling. The origin of these sounds in in the "Great Vowel Shift" of Middle English.
The notion of a long and short "a" sound is quite ingrained. I've known people who found it very hard to accept that the "long a" sound was actually formed of two vowels that are closer to "e" and "i". So to indicate "make" [meɪk] they write the "long a" sound as ā. A similar scheme is used on Mirriam Webster, and seems to be more common in US dictionaries.
This may be surprising to a speaker of Russian, who doesn't have the notion of the long a = [eɪ]. And since they don't seem to show the pronunciation to English speakers, the system looks like a doubtful choice. IPA is much better, for those who know it, and language learners are more likely to know IPA than the average. IPA is less useful to English speakers, who want an indication of the pronunciation.
The actual transcriptions look accurate to me, with the exception of hair.
The transcriptions of Russian are different. They are an attempt to represent the Russian sounds in latin script to English speakers. It seems to be (based on?) the BGN/PCGN scheme, intended to be intuitive for English speakers.