Having experienced similar when I was your age (I'm now 41) here's what I've found useful:
1) never ever compare yourself to others, especially based on age. do your thing. for you.
2) wanting to achieve things in life is great but how young you do them really doesn't matter nearly as much as you think it does
3) wanting to achieve things in life is great but the way you treat people day-to-day trumps any achievement
4) go with where your energy is and let your goals emerge from that rather than expect the other way around. Don't set a goal of running a marathon if you hate running.
While the affricate /d͡ʒ/ is not pronounced as a separate stop+fricative, it can result from the combining of the stop and the fricative and that is presumably what is behind the choice of "dj" as a digraph for representing /d͡ʒ/ in Django.
Given all the confusion here, I've added what is hopefully a simpler and more introductory explanation:
Django is pronounced with an initial sound that, in English is often written "j". This might lead one to think of the "D" as silent with the "j" being pronounced the way it is in English.
However, that doesn't explain why the "D" is there in the first place.
A more insightful way to think of it is to remember it's a French spelling. Think of the "j" as being pronounced as in French. Now put a "d" sound in front of it. When the "d" sound and "j" sound merge, you get something called an affricate. This particular affricate is the same sound used in English to pronounce just "j".
So a French "dj" is like an English "j". The "d" isn't silent, though, because the French "j" is not the same as the English "j".
Not sure where you think I say that, but to clarify anyway: the sound at the start of all those words in English is not the same as the sound the French write as "j".
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"
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").
But if you're trying to explain why Django is spelled the way it is, it's far more insightful to explain /d/ -> <d> and /ʒ/ -> <j> than to posit the <d> comes from nowhere and is just silent.
It is much easier to explain it the way everybody else in this thread (such as has pash's sibling comment) been explaining it, judging from the confusion and befuddlement people seem to be expressing.
I haven't seen anyone else explain why Django is spelled with a D. All I've seen is people reiterate the reason for the pronunciation given the spelling as "the D is silent" rather than the more insightful fact that, far from being silent, the D was necessary for Django Reinhardt to express the pronunciation of his nickname in his native language.
Well, firstly that comment postdates your initial comment that "everybody else in this thread" explains it better and you added the "(such as has pash's sibling comment)" after I'd responded.
Secondly, I wanted to dive in a bit more and explain the relationship between the "j" in English vs French and hence the role of the "d" in the French spelling (as that's kind of the whole point).
Ah, I think you've hit on the major point of confusion.
Phoneticists commonly represent the English "j" sound as the amalgam of two separate sounds:
(a) English "d", a common enough sound; and
(b) the somewhat less common "zh" sound, the second consonant sound in "beige".
In French†, these two sounds are separately written as "d" and "j", and combined (try it—speak quickly) they make the English "j" sound.
This is what everyone has been trying to explain with the unfortunately obscure IPA references.
† – Likewise in other languages, per my examples above. For example, in Russian, the two sounds are separately denoted "д" and "ж" and combine to form the English "j" sound, as in "Джугашвили" (which is Georgian, really: "ჯუღაშვილი").
I'm not sure what the confusion is. I agree with what you've said above.
Basically: 1. "d" in French is pronounced "d". 2. "j" in French is pronounced "zh". 3. "dj" in French is pronounced as the same affricate you get by combining "d" and "zh". 4. This is a better explanation for the "dj" in Django rather than saying the "j" is an affricate and the "d" is silent.
In my view, it's simpler to explain that the English "j" and the French "dj" represent the same sound ... and leave out all the slashes and brackets and arrows and whatnot.
Right, but the best explanation for why "Django" is spelled with a <d> is not that the <d> is silent and the <j> represents /d͡ʒ/ but rather that, as you say, the diagraph <dj> represents /d͡ʒ/.
Yes, but when somebody says "the d is silent" they're giving directions to spell and pronounce this word in English, not a lesson in French etymology. Your cure is worse than the disease.
1) never ever compare yourself to others, especially based on age. do your thing. for you.
2) wanting to achieve things in life is great but how young you do them really doesn't matter nearly as much as you think it does
3) wanting to achieve things in life is great but the way you treat people day-to-day trumps any achievement
4) go with where your energy is and let your goals emerge from that rather than expect the other way around. Don't set a goal of running a marathon if you hate running.