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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"

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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").

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