Item — HN Reader

Is this a deliberately confusing explanation?

"... this falsehood perpetuated on the big screen in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained where the eponymous character spells his name, adding 'the D is silent'."

...

"The D is not silent, it's very much pronounced."

...

"... Tarantino's film teaches the correct pronunciation ... it is incorrect to say 'the D is silent'."

...

"But in French, /dʒ/ can be written 'dj' because the 'j' alone is just /ʒ/."

OK, if the "d" is not silent, don't you mean that /dʒ/ must be written "dj"?

Why not just say that, in English, "j" as in "James" has the tongue touching the roof of the mouth, so it always sounds a little like a "d", but in French it doesn't?

1 comments

/dʒ/ doesn't have to be be written "dj" (it isn't in English, for example). It just is written that way in French because "j" alone is just /ʒ/ (as you quote above).

When you ask "why not just say...", well that is pretty much what I say in the first sentence of the third card.

I find this even more confusing.

#1: You preface that sentence with "But in French" so why mention English? Can /dʒ/ actually be written some other way than "dj" in French? From your post, it seems like the answer is no.

#2: The first paragraph of the third card neither mentions nor implies (to the non-linguists among us, at least) anything about English "j" having a hint of "d". This is something I'd never realized before, and only discovered it by saying "James" aloud a few times after this post; and I'm still not 100% sure that it's right, based on the post.