
The Pronunciation of Django - jtauber
https://thoughtstreams.io/jtauber/the-pronunciation-of-django/
======
sirclueless
This is a pretty ridiculous claim in my mind.

You start with the premise that the "Dj" in Django sounds like the "J" in
James or Jason or jangle or nearly every other English word with this
pronunciation. Now, based on linguistic history and French pronunciation
norms, you claim it is more appropriate to conclude that all of these other
words have implied "D's" than to conclude that Django has a silent "D".

You might be right that the pronunciation of James with a phonetic /dʒ/ sound
is a historical oddity, but it doesn't make your conclusions any more valid.
If the J in James and the J in Japan and the J in jerk and the Dj in Django
all sound like /dʒ/ the conclusion should be that the D is silent in English,
not that the French are more correct than we are.

~~~
thomasjoulin
From a french speaker point of view, it doesn't makes sense indeed.

It's interesting to note that in the french trailer, Django says "Django –
Avec un D" (Django, with a D). Also the trailer is much more graphic than the
(censored?) U.S. one

~~~
jtauber
It just occurs to me: does French even have the affricate /d͡ʒ/ natively? Do
some native French speakers pronounce "Django" with an initial /ʒ/? That
actually _would_ be a silent D and would explain why the French would say
"Django with a D" rather than "the D is silent"

~~~
thomasjoulin
Not that I can think of. French people will correctly pronounce foreign words
with /d͡ʒ/ if they are adopted in the french language (James, jingle or the
arabic word jinn), but no french word beginning with J will be pronounced
/d͡ʒ/. And no frenchman will ever pronounce Django as /ʒɑ̃ɡo/.

I think that they had to come up with something to replace "the D is silent"
in the trailer, because it wouldn't make sense in french. For example the H is
silent in french, wich explain the french accent on english words ("Ello
'Arry").

------
eel
In English, the grapheme "d" very commonly represents the sound /d/. Likewise,
the grapheme "j" in English very commonly represents the sound /dʒ/.

Additionally /dʒ/ is a single distinct sound. There is no /d/ sound in /dʒ/.
It's an unfortunate issue that IPA notation might make it appear as though
/dʒ/ is the concatenation (borrowing a programming term) of /d/ and /ʒ/ when
it is most certainly not. The author's assertion might make sense if
affricates such as dʒ represented multiple sounds, but I am not aware of any
linguists that subscribe to such an idea.

So when we say "the D is silent" in the word Django to other English speakers,
we are implying that there is no /d/ sound at the start of the word, and that
would be correct. The author's argument does not make any sense here.

~~~
_delirium
More careful IPA emphasizes this by _not_ transcribing it as the sequence of
characters /dʒ/, though doing so is still common. For a while the solution was
to use a ligature, /ʤ/, to emphasize that it was a single consonant, not a
sequence of two consonants, but that was typographically to difficult to
distinguish from /dʒ/, so now /d͡ʒ/ is preferred, using the generic IPA kludge
for "these two characters should be treated as one".

~~~
jtauber
Yeah, I didn't bother with /d͡ʒ/ (incidentally, neither does Wikipedia in
their pronunciation of Django Reinhardt's name) because my main point was to
explain the origin of the <d> in the name "Django".

------
zallarak
This article may be of interest to you; "Democracy, English, and the Wars over
Usage" by David Foster Wallace:
<http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html>. The relevant
argument is that general consensus and what people actually use constitutes
how words should be used/pronounced, as opposed to referencing laws.

~~~
jtauber
I wrote a little on this topic many years ago on my blog:
<http://jtauber.com/blog/2008/04/30/grammar_rules/>

~~~
AYBABTME
I'm trying to start a movement to kill the mess that are 'participe passé'. My
idea is that if everybody ALWAYS accord them, then we won't have to bother
whether it's with 'avoir', 'être' or whatever else. We would always put an 's'
to plural forms, and forget those evil 'participe passé' rules.

Join me. The more we are, the more Right we become.

------
ksaraghan
As a linguistics student, I don't like this argument. Orthographic <j> in
English represents the affricate /dʒ/, which is unambiguously a phoneme in
English. <J> by itself (generally) represents /dʒ/, so the <d> doesn't
contribute any additional phonetic content to the word, so you could, in fact,
call it a "silent" <d>. French has a phoneme /ʒ/, written <j>, but, lacking
the affricate /dʒ/, has to represent that sound as a sequence of a /d/ and a
/ʒ/, hence, <dj>. But when we're talking about an Anglicized name written and
pronounced by English-speakers why should what French does be of any
relevance?

~~~
jtauber
We're talking about a web framework named after a Belgian with a Romani
nickname whose creator (the web framework's) desires that the web framework be
pronounced the same as its namesake. If it were truly Anglicized, you would
expect it to be spelled "Jango".

So how can we best analyze _why_ it is spelled <Dj-> and yet pronounced /dʒ-/?

Either it's because:

1\. <d> is silent and <j> is /dʒ/; or 2\. <d> is pronounced /d/ and <j> is
pronounced /ʒ/

2 seems by far the more perspicuous analysis to me given the absence of other
examples of a silent <d>. And it's certainly the correct analysis in the case
of the guitarist.

~~~
antihero
I'd say it was because "dj" in the original language is like how the English
say "j" in "james", and "j" in the original language is a much softer "j",
like in "j'adore".

------
pash
The letters "j" in English and "dj" in French represent the same sound†, what
Wikipedia calls the "voiced palato-velolar affricate" [0]. That's /dʒ/ in IPA.

In English orthography, yes, the "D" in "Django"is silent, at least in the
sense that if you remove it from the French spelling you'll get the phonetic
English spelling.

† — as well as "dzh" ["дж"] in Russian, etc.

0\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palato-
alveolar_affricat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palato-
alveolar_affricate)

~~~
jtauber
But if you're trying to explain why Django is spelled the way it is, it's far
more insightful to explain /d/ -> <d> and /ʒ/ -> <j> than to posit the <d>
comes from nowhere and is just silent.

~~~
jlgreco
It is much easier to explain it the way everybody else in this thread _(such
as has pash's sibling comment)_ been explaining it, judging from the confusion
and befuddlement people seem to be expressing.

~~~
jtauber
I haven't seen anyone else explain why Django is spelled with a D. All I've
seen is people reiterate the reason for the pronunciation given the spelling
as "the D is silent" rather than the more insightful fact that, far from being
silent, the D was necessary for Django Reinhardt to express the pronunciation
of his nickname in his native language.

~~~
jlgreco
I fail to see how pash's comment does not explain that:

 _"the English "j" and the French "dj" represent the same sound"_

~~~
jtauber
Well, firstly that comment postdates your initial comment that "everybody else
in this thread" explains it better and you added the "(such as has pash's
sibling comment)" _after_ I'd responded.

Secondly, I wanted to dive in a bit more and explain the relationship between
the "j" in English vs French and hence the role of the "d" in the French
spelling (as that's kind of the whole point).

~~~
pash
Ah, I think you've hit on the major point of confusion.

Phoneticists commonly represent the English "j" sound as the amalgam of two
separate sounds:

(a) English "d", a common enough sound; and

(b) the somewhat less common "zh" sound, the second consonant sound in
"beige".

In French†, these two sounds are separately written as "d" and "j", and
combined (try it—speak quickly) they make the English "j" sound.

This is what everyone has been trying to explain with the unfortunately
obscure IPA references.

† – Likewise in other languages, per my examples above. For example, in
Russian, the two sounds are separately denoted "д" and "ж" and combine to form
the English "j" sound, as in "Джугашвили" (which is Georgian, really:
"ჯუღაშვილი").

~~~
jtauber
I'm not sure what the confusion is. I agree with what you've said above.

Basically: 1. "d" in French is pronounced "d". 2. "j" in French is pronounced
"zh". 3. "dj" in French is pronounced as the same affricate you get by
combining "d" and "zh". 4. This is a better explanation for the "dj" in Django
rather than saying the "j" is an affricate and the "d" is silent.

------
jdunck
This is in reference to Tarantino's recently-released movie "Django
Unchained": [http://news.moviefone.com/2012/06/06/django-unchained-
traile...](http://news.moviefone.com/2012/06/06/django-unchained-trailer-
quentin-tarantino_n_1575805.html)

Only Django devs are likely to care about this, as air-traffic controllers
howling at the inanity of the Top Gun fly-by (or, closer to home, every 3D
representation of hacking in movies ever).

~~~
jdlshore
It's not silent in French. In English, it is. It's pronounced the same way as
the J in James, which happens to be my name.

To paraphrase Ron Jeffries, the D in my name is silent... and invisible.

~~~
fusiongyro
In French 'j' carries /ʒ/ and the digraph 'dj' carries /d͡ʒ/. In English, 'j'
carries /d͡ʒ/ and there's no consistent orthographic convention for just /ʒ/
('si', 'zh', 'j', and 'z' all do the job in different contexts, and probably
others as well). There isn't really a /d/ as such in /d͡ʒ/.

~~~
jtauber
Right, but the best explanation for why "Django" is spelled with a <d> is
_not_ that the <d> is silent and the <j> represents /d͡ʒ/ but rather that, as
you say, the diagraph <dj> represents /d͡ʒ/.

~~~
fusiongyro
Yes, but when somebody says "the d is silent" they're giving directions to
spell and pronounce this word in English, not a lesson in French etymology.
Your cure is worse than the disease.

------
mikhael
Is this a deliberately confusing explanation?

"... this falsehood perpetuated on the big screen in Quentin Tarantino's
Django Unchained where the eponymous character spells his name, adding 'the D
is silent'."

...

"The D is not silent, it's very much pronounced."

...

"... Tarantino's film teaches the correct pronunciation ... it is incorrect to
say 'the D is silent'."

...

"But in French, /dʒ/ can be written 'dj' because the 'j' alone is just /ʒ/."

OK, if the "d" is not silent, don't you mean that /dʒ/ _must_ be written "dj"?

Why not just say that, in English, "j" as in "James" has the tongue touching
the roof of the mouth, so it always sounds a little like a "d", but in French
it doesn't?

~~~
jtauber
/dʒ/ doesn't _have_ to be be written "dj" (it isn't in English, for example).
It just is written that way in French because "j" alone is just /ʒ/ (as you
quote above).

When you ask "why not just say...", well that _is_ pretty much what I say in
the first sentence of the third card.

~~~
mikhael
I find this even more confusing.

#1: You preface that sentence with "But in French" so why mention English? Can
/dʒ/ actually be written some other way than "dj" in French? From your post,
it seems like the answer is no.

#2: The first paragraph of the third card neither mentions nor implies (to the
non-linguists among us, at least) anything about English "j" having a hint of
"d". This is something I'd never realized before, and only discovered it by
saying "James" aloud a few times after this post; and I'm still not 100% sure
that it's right, based on the post.

------
graue
Now that's a confusing explanation! Most Python programmers I've met have
pronounced it "duh-jango", and I thought this article was going to defend that
pronunciation. But it actually says that pronunciation is wrong, and the D is,
from an English speaker's perspective, silent. But because J is pronounced
differently in French, saying that the D is silent is, although it leads
English speakers to pronounce the name correctly, technically semantically
incorrect.

...Did I get that right?

~~~
jtauber
The reason "Django" is pronounced /​dʒɑ̃ɡo/ or /dʒæŋɡəʊ/ is not because the
"D" is silent and the "j" is pronounced /dʒ/ but rather because the "D" is
pronounced /d/ and the "j" is pronounced /ʒ/.

Explaining how to pronounce it by saying "the D is silent" might be helpful
but it's technically incorrect.

It may seem like pedantry to many but I thought people with an interest in
linguistics might find it helpful.

~~~
_delirium
That's not a precisely correct explanation either, though, because English
'j', pronounced /d͡ʒ/, is a single consonant sound (a voiced palato-alveolar
affricate), not a sequence of two consonants. Though it's true that it's what
English speakers would produce if you asked them to pronounce /d/ + /ʒ/ in
sequence, because they always collapse into the single consonant. Not sure if
that's also true in French.

~~~
jtauber
Right, I didn't bother making the distinction between the true affricate /d͡ʒ/
and the sequence /dʒ/ because my main point was that the <d> exists in
<Django> because <j> alone would be pronounced /ʒ/ and hence the <d> isn't a
silent letter but exists explicitly to contrast /d͡ʒ/ with /ʒ/

~~~
_delirium
Ah yeah, that makes sense to me. Even if you treat 'd' as a kind of modifier
in French (it turns the 'j' from a sibilant into an affricative) it's clearly
still having an effect on the pronunciation. I was somewhat objecting to
whether the the 'd' _itself_ is being pronounced, but that does get pretty
hair-splitting, especially since /d/ is a stop. The transcription /dʒ/ sure
makes it look like it's pronounced, but if IPA used a single character to
transcribe the affricative, the 'd' would look like it disappeared in French
too. But, granted, rather than having no effect (as in English), in French
it'd still modulate the pronunciation of the 'j' even in that analysis.

Incidentally, I wonder if there are any languages where /d͡ʒ/ != /dʒ/ or if
it's just impossible to produce that sequence.

~~~
jtauber
I'm trying to think of other modifier examples. Not a perfect analogy but I
don't think you'd say that, in English, the <h> in <sh> is silent.

I wonder about Italian, though. Would it be correct to say the <g> is silent
in <gli>?

Seems a much tougher call in Italian. I would say /d͡ʒ/ has a __much __closer
relationship to /dʒ/ than /ʎ/ does to /gli/ for example.

~~~
jtauber
Also /d/ + /ʒ/ does become /d͡ʒ/ in English (and potentially all languages
that have /d/ and /ʒ/) so even if you had a single symbol for /d͡ʒ/ that was
unrelated to that for /d/, the relationship between /dʒ/ and /d͡ʒ/ is still
close.

------
mcclosdl
What do you mean "James" doesn't start with "j" sound? James, Justin, Jam,
Jerry, Jello, just, joy, jog, jib.... those all sound like the same J to me.

~~~
jtauber
Not sure where you think I say that, but to clarify anyway: the sound at the
start of all those words in English is _not_ the same as the sound the French
write as "j".

------
jtauber
Given all the confusion here, I've added what is hopefully a simpler and more
introductory explanation:

Django is pronounced with an initial sound that, in English is often written
"j". This might lead one to think of the "D" as silent with the "j" being
pronounced the way it is in English.

However, that doesn't explain why the "D" is there in the first place.

A more insightful way to think of it is to remember it's a French spelling.
Think of the "j" as being pronounced as in French. Now put a "d" sound in
front of it. When the "d" sound and "j" sound merge, you get something called
an affricate. This particular affricate is the same sound used in English to
pronounce just "j".

So a French "dj" is like an English "j". The "d" isn't silent, though, because
the French "j" is not the same as the English "j".

------
nhebb
OK, but I'm still going to pronounce it duh-jango. Sorry - it's ingrained.

~~~
benatkin
That's fine by me. I'm just glad that the Django project doesn't advocate
this, like the Gnu project does with "gah-noo". I think that if you use a word
that already exists it's better to prescribe nothing. I haven't heard anyone
on or close to the Django core team rant about people pronouncing it "duh-
jango" and I hope it stays that way.

------
verroq
After five paragraphs and still no audio of the correct pronunciation?

------
antihero
So English "j" not French sounding "j".

