I’m not saying this to anyone in particular, but I’ve heard people pronounce Django incorrectly way too often. The "dj" in Django is a hard J, like in the word "jury" or "jolly". You don’t pronounce the D.
Update: Alex Limi tells me I’m wrong too, and it’s a soft J, like… damn, I can’t think of a word that uses a soft J in English.
I’m not sure I can use that pronunciation, I’m afraid I’ll sound all Frenchy and weird. I’ll give it a go. Zhango zhango zhango… hmm…
Another update: confirming my original pronunciation, Adrian says it is a hard J. Alex is just too European for his own good. Does the debate rage on? Hopefully not.
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Actually, no. :-)
It’s named after Django Reinhardt, and his name is pronounced “zhane-go rhine-heart” (approximation).
So it’s not the hard J in jury/jolly.
I’m basing the following on pronunciation of Django Reinhardt, after whom the framework is named –
It’s like the “J” in jolly. The French pronounce “Django” as “Zhaaango” (with the first syllable rhyming with Zsa Zsa Gabor’s first name), but we ignorant Americans pronounce it so that it rhymes with “dang-oh.”
http://www.forvo.com/word/django_reinhardt/
this is the best explanation I’ve found. some may americanize to feel less silly but this seems the truest pronunciation.
cheers!
It always seemed to me that the “D” in front of the name forced a hard “j” pronounciation. Likewise I felt that the “g” belongs with the “o”. So in my mind “Django” sounds like “jungle” except it ends with “-oh” instead of “-’l”.
I was utterly weirded out when I heard someone in a screencast pronounce it “zhæn·go”. I don’t think I could ever get used to that. Praise be to Adrian for sparing me.
;-)A “hard j” is actually just an affricate made up of a “d” + a “soft j”.
So in other words, the “j” in Django is itself a “soft j” but the overall initial sound cluster is the affricate “hard j”.
(I tried to use the International Phonetic Alphabet in this post but preview suggested it wouldn’t work)
Wikipedia gives the pronunciation of Django Reinhardt as “dʒ”, that is, the hard “j” of “jam”.
I can’t think of a word that uses a soft J in English.
“abrasion”, “adhesion”, “allusion”, “collision”, “conclusion”, “erasure”, “fusion”, “lesion”, “occasion”, “vision”.
[editors note: no wonder I couldn't think of any of them, none of them actually use the letter J]
… and don’t forget what dictionaries always list for zh: ‘azure’ which is perhaps more clear when listing ‘zh’ as is common. It is more commonly ‘si’, though, within words (like how ‘ch’ is often ‘k’ but what children are taught as ‘ch’ is actually from the german ‘tsch’ (to be technical, high german and old english [beowulf-era] separated quite a while ago, but, that’s a moot point), and ‘sh’ is often ‘sch’ or ‘ti’); exempli gratia magis, perfusion, occlusion, intrusion, confusion, …. wait, you gave ‘erasure’ as an example, the ‘s’ (zh/sh) is always pronounced voicelessly where I come from.
If you want an example of ‘j’, try “dijon” (as in dijon mustard), though that is a French loanword (I think).
[aside: I've always taken issues with the dz (no, I'm not hunting down the 3 with a triangular top) approach typically used in IPA for english. To me, a hard j is a palatalized d, not a blended consonant... the IPA convention just doesn't strike me as an affricate; it's a plosive and a fricative, but that doesn't make it obviously an affircate! and, thank you, james tauber, for bringing up the linguistic terminology.. sometimes that is the best way to clear up confusion, or so I've found!]
The biggest problem I have with Django is the name. And it’s all my own fault. Every time I think Django to myself, I always make it into that song about the dog “DJ-A-N-G-O. And Django was his name-o”. You have now been infected.
Sean
Now, how do you pronounce “cache?”
“Cash.”
-not-
“Catch.”
That one makes lasers shoot out of my ears.
I always thought it was “caysh”
I have seen people pronounce it as “Cae-shay”.
I took my cue from Woody Allen’s pronunciation of Django Reinhardt in his movie “Sweet and Lowdown” (with Sean Penn- a fantastic movie). It’s a hard J if you believe Woody, and I do.
The soft J sound is probably the one best known to Americans as in Zsa Zsa Gabor, or as in Dr. Zhivago, but it’s moot anyway.
Soft ‘j’, hard ‘j’, whatever. Let’s not forget the crucial point: it is definitely NOT “Duh-Jango”.
The one time I had to say the name out loud I got “Dyango” But I’m proably alone in that sillyness. I’ve said “java” as “yava” more than once.
You are not alone! I, too, thought it was ‘Dyango’ until I found this site.
I don’t know what “hard” and “soft” J means, does it mean whether it’s [voiced](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_%28phonetics%29) or not?
I believe they are both voiced. I think it is whether or not your tongue hits your palette (the top of your mouth). A soft J is like a voiced sh.
Robin,
“soft j” = the sound made by ‘s’ in all those examples given by Hamish in comment #6
“hard j” = the sound made by ‘j’ in Java, jolly, James, etc
If you’re wondering why it’s called a “soft j” given it’s not normally written with a “j” in English, it’s because some languages like French, it is written with a “j”.
The difference is not one of voice. Both “soft j” and “hard j” are voiced. The unvoiced version of a “soft j” is often written in English as “sh” as in “ship”. The unvoiced version of a “hard j” is often written “ch” as in “chip”.
Note that “ch” there is really a combination of a “t” with a “sh” (that combination is called an affricate)
Similarly, the “hard j” is really a combination of “d” with a “soft j”.
So in a language where “j” = “soft j” (like French), “dj” = “hard j”.
Note finally that “soft j” is to “sh” as “z” is to “s” and so a “soft j” is often transcribed “zh”.
Thank you both for your explanations. Are there other sounds which are referred to as soft or hard in English?
So then, the way I pronounce the name is with a “hard j” and the vowels like in German or Italian.
I’ve also heard “hard” and “soft” applied to variations of what is written “g”, although somewhat confusingly “soft g” = “hard j” (e.g. “German”). “Hard g” is then the first sound of “goat”.
I’ve also heard people talk about “hard c” = “c” in “cat” and “soft c” = “c” in “city”.
While they may have been used in traditional grammars, “hard” and “soft” aren’t technical terms used by linguists nowadays — at least not in my experience. I only used them here as that’s what other people were doing and I thought if I talked about voiced postalveolar affricates and the like, it wouldn’t help :-)
Technically,
hard j = voiced postalveolar affricate
soft j = voiced postalveolar fricative
hard g = voiced velar plosive
soft g = voiced postalveolar affricate
hard c = voiceless velar plosive
soft c = voiceless postalveolar fricative
I suspect the hard/soft distinction is relative position on the dimension: fricative >> affricate >> plosive which has to do with how interrupted the airflow is during production.
But let me just reiterate brantley’s point: the crucial point is Django is definitely NOT pronounced “Duh-Jango”.
Haha, this discussion rocks. I actually ran across someone who called it Dee-jango…it was ridiculous.
This is funny, the pronounciation is explained in the docs on: http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/faq/#who-s-behind-this (2nd question)
Thanks again, James. I looked the linguistic terms up in Wikipedia, it explains them nicely. “Soft c” is a “normal s”, so it should be “voiceless alveolar fricative”, right?
I hadn’t realised up to now that the only distinction between “k” and “hard g” lies in their voicing – another thing learned as a hobby linguist :).
In Norway it’s pronounced dj-an-goo. :-)
I grew up reading the facade and pronouncing it like its spelled. To me, I seemed knowledgeable but it turned out to just be a fa kaid.
i think it basically depends on your orientation. In my case, since I’m a Filipina, I, or should i say, We pronounce DJANGO as “JANG-GO”.. yeah, with the hard J sound.. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Django Bustamante.. who is famous in Billiards..
Now I hate to change the subject, but could someone tell me that Mulch is pronounced “mul-ch” and not “mul-sh”….hate it when I hear it pronounced this way with the “sh”…..thanks….
thx everyone, i was looking it up cuz i am fasanated by this guy, django james, dave stewarts son, and i wanted to know how to pronounce it. thx!
Like what Eric mentioned, I pronounced it as Dee-jango~~~~ Okay after all I can make the correct pronunciation now. Thanks for your masterpiece, Ian.
I would say it’s a hard j – in Turkish there’s the letter “c” witch is pronounced like a hard j and sometimes written as ‘dj’ in English – Like “hodja” – ‘hoca’