Pronunciation exercises: /dʒ/ vs /j/

Voiced palatal approximant Voiced postalveolar affricate

/dʒ/ is a consonant. /j/ is a semivowel.

The sounds of /j/ and /dʒ/ cannot be confused at the end of the word. For example “badge" /bædʒ/ and “by" /baj/ sound very differently. Moreover, in Teflpedia we transcribe “by" as /baɪ/. For these reasons we won’t show words ending in /dʒ/.

We don’t consider /dʒ/ after a consonant (such as “danger" /deɪndʒər/), because /j/ after a consonant is very different (nobody would pronounce "onion" as */ˈʌndʒən/ instead of /ˈʌnjən/).

/dʒ/

• At the beginning of the word: job, join, joke, journalist, journey, judge, jump, just, justice, gender, gene, general, gentleman, giant

• In the middle of the word: agent, budget, imagine, intelligence, manager, major, original, project, region, register, religious, reject

/j/

• Europe - uniform - unique - use - usually - yard - year - yellow - yes - yesterday - yet - yield - York - you - young - your - youth
• beyond /bɪˈjɒnd, biˈɒnd/

IPA phonetic symbol [j]

Some linguists spell /aɪ/ as /aj/ or /ɑj/, /eɪ/ as /ej/ or /ɛj/, /iː/ as /ij/ or /ɪj/ and /ɔɪ/ as /oj/ or /ɔj/. This is consistent with the tendency of some learners to replace [j] by [dʒ] as in "player" pronounced as */ˈpledʒər/ instead of /ˈpleɪər/.

/dʒ/ vs /j/

• Jack - yak; jello - yellow; jet - yet; Jew - you; Jews - use (v.); job - yob^BrE (rude male); joke - yolk; juice - use (n.)

Spanish L1

See IPA phoneme /dʒ/ § Spanish.

See also

• Pronunciation exercises: /dʒ/ vs /tʃ/