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The Pronunciation of Django

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Re: The Pronunciation of Django

#11

Post by 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?

Re: The Pronunciation of Django

#12

Post by jtauber »

graue wrote: post #11

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 c…

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.

Re: The Pronunciation of Django

#13

Post by ksaraghan »

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

Re: The Pronunciation of Django

#14

Post by 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.

Re: The Pronunciation of Django

#15

Post by wisty »

zallarak wrote: post #4

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.

o rlly?

Prescriptive grammars exits to teach poor people (or immigrants) how to speak and write like rich people. Rules are easier to teach and learn than an essentially unlimited number of examples. Some people say this is good - it makes it harder to discriminate against poor people. Some people say it is bad, because it reinforces the idea that poor people speak in an uneducated way.

Let's be frank - neither side can be trusted. They aren't interested in quantitative arguments, or logic, or a rigorous historical study. They'll just line up a bunch of emotive arguments, and then claim that their side rings true (because to them, it does).

Re: The Pronunciation of Django

#16

Post by 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.

Re: The Pronunciation of Django

#17

Post by benatkin »

nhebb wrote: post #10

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

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.

Re: The Pronunciation of Django

#18

Post by tomintokyo »

ksaraghan wrote: post #13

As a linguistics student, I don't like this argument. Orthographic in English represents the affricate /dʒ/, which is unambiguously a phoneme in English. by itself (generally) represents /dʒ/, so the doesn't contribute any additional phonetic content to the word, so you could, in fact, call it a "silent" . French has a phoneme /ʒ/, written , but, lacking the affricate /dʒ/, has to represent that sound as a sequence o…

This is the clearest explanation yet. At the beginning of a word in English, orthographic is virtually always pronounced /dʒ/.

Re: The Pronunciation of Django

#20

Post by FreakLegion »

zallarak wrote: post #4

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.

>The relevant argument is that general consensus and what people actually use constitutes how words should be used/pronounced, as opposed to referencing laws.

Of course. "Let the use of words teach you their meaning," and so on. But when it comes to names, all bets are off. Names are a special case; prescription still holds sway over them. At least, I think most people would agree that you (the indefinite you) aren't wrong to correct someone who mispronounces your name. To varying extents, this is true also of the names of things.

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