Comments on: Pronouncing “Django”

By: kristine

kristine — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:35:36 +0000

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..

By: Al Brown

Al Brown — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:56:37 +0000

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.

By: Henrik Lied

Henrik Lied — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 12:51:39 +0000

In Norway it’s pronounced dj-an-goo. :-)

By: Robin

Robin — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 01:09:09 +0000

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 :).

By: grzywacz

grzywacz — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 01:08:09 +0000

This is funny, the pronounciation is explained in the docs on: http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/faq/#who-s-behind-this (2nd question)

By: Eric Florenzano

Eric Florenzano — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:40:45 +0000

Haha, this discussion rocks. I actually ran across someone who called it Dee-jango…it was ridiculous.

By: James Tauber

James Tauber — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:13:26 +0000

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”.

By: Robin

Robin — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:55:07 +0000

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.

By: James Tauber

James Tauber — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:00:24 +0000

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”.

By: Ian Bicking

Ian Bicking — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 18:54:22 +0000

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.