It sounded like sh at the start

There are two histories fighting over the letters ch in English. The French one gives chef, machine, chandelier and champagne, where ch says sh. The Greek one gives chorus, character, chronic and cheilanthes, where ch says k. A reader who has met more French words than Greek ones will reach for sh, and a listener who has only heard the word said aloud has no way of telling which family it belongs to. The test is the rest of the word: anthos, cheilos, chloros and chrysos are Greek roots, they turn up all over botanical naming, and they always take the hard sound.

The letters ch pulled towards the French sh rather than the Greek k.