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This is in reference to Tarantino's recently-released movie "Django Unchained": http://news.moviefone.com/2012/06/06/django-unchained-traile...

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).

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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.

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/.

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/.

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.

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