Pronunciation exercises: /dʒ/ vs /j/

/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 instead of /ˈʌnjən/).

/dʒ/

 * At the beginning of the word: job, join, 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/

 * 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 explains the tendency of some learners to replace [j] by [dʒ] as in "player" pronounced as instead of /ˈpleɪər/.

/dʒ/ vs /j/

 * jet - yet; jew - you; job - yob (rude male); joke - yolk

Spanish L1
See IPA phoneme /dʒ/ § Spanish.