Comment by sirclueless | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sirclueless | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

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"

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").

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

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