Re:The Pronunciation of Django
by ksaraghan on Friday December 28, 2012 @01:35AM
(#4976755)
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?
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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.
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".
Re:The Pronunciation of Django
by tomintokyo on Friday December 28, 2012 @01:44AM
(#4976776)
This is the clearest explanation yet. At the beginning of a word in English, orthographic <j> is virtually always pronounced /dʒ/.