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The Dutch 'letter' IJ (2001)

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Re: The Dutch 'letter' IJ (2001)

#21

Post by avar »

Sander_Marechal wrote: post #6
ctenb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this reflects a cultural phenomenon. Dutch people are very pragmatic when it comes to language. This is also seen in how easily loan words are introduced, especially from English these days, compared to say, French or German people.

Also compare it to Belgium. The Flemmish people speak Dutch but they are much more "pure" about the language. Where the Dutch will simply use loan words from English or other languages, the Flemmish try to invent new Dutch words.

The same goes for Afrikaans to some extent, i.e. many words in it are a more purist version of Dutch, whereas Dutch itself adopted some loan word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Afrikaans_and_Du...

Re: The Dutch 'letter' IJ (2001)

#22

Post by Muximize »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #14

I mean in English “th” ceally should be it’s own letter. It really has nothing to do with a “t” or an “h” and really should thought of as a single letter that just looks like two others. In many fonts, it really is because it’s a common ligature for aesthetic reasons.

It used to be its own letter in Old English, and in Icelandic it still is: þ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

Re: The Dutch 'letter' IJ (2001)

#23

Post by sneed_chucker »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #14

I mean in English “th” ceally should be it’s own letter. It really has nothing to do with a “t” or an “h” and really should thought of as a single letter that just looks like two others. In many fonts, it really is because it’s a common ligature for aesthetic reasons.

It used to be its own letter.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

Re: The Dutch 'letter' IJ (2001)

#25

Post by crote »

arp242 wrote: post #17

I think this is a bit of a generational thing, with older people considering ij a letter, and younger don't, "younger" being under 40/50 or so. I'm approaching 40 and I was never taught to see ij as a letter, and always considered it to be the same as eu, ou, ei, and so forth: two letters that make a single sound (digraph). The y doesn't occur in Dutch words, only in loanwords, and while loanwords with a y are relati…

The funny part is that 'y' used to be quite common in Middle Dutch as a variant of 'ij' or 'i'. This resulted in words like 'anys' (now 'anijs'), 'Leyden' (now 'Leiden'), 'ghelyc' (now 'gelijk'), and 'waerheyt' (now 'waarheid'). It was simply an alternative spelling. This was officially abolished with a spelling reform in 1863, with it only being allowed in loan words.

> I also think it's fine to just capitalize the I: Ijsland instead of IJsland. I suspect this will be the norm 50 years from now.

Nope, this just looks wrong to me and the spelling rules do not allow it. It is written as a single letter, so it should be capitalized as a single letter.

Re: The Dutch 'letter' IJ (2001)

#26

Post by crote »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #4
wkat4242 wrote: post #2

I think the ligature has just disappeared in favor of 'ij' because in Holland we use American keyboards. There used to be a special Dutch keyboard layout but simply using the American ones was cheaper. They lack the accents, the old florin sign and ligatures we have like the 'ij' and the paragraph sign. So we ended up using those less and less. Now I never write accents anymore in Dutch. And good riddance.

In many languages the task of a typesetter is inserting ligatures for when the author’s manuscript had simply written two separate letters. I wonder if the same is true of modern Dutch publishing, even if ordinary people write i+j. Afrikaans seems to have done fine with just giving up on this letter/sequence of letters entirely.

Most of it is just handled by selecting the proper font, which automatically gives you the proper ligature.

The interesting thing is that Afrikaans actually went the opposite direction as Dutch. Prior to 1863 Dutch used 'y' and 'ij' pretty much interchangeably, but a spelling reform made 'ij' the official spelling in Dutch. However, Afrikaans seems to have settled on 'y' and 'i', leading to things like the Dutch word 'tijd' being spelled 'tyd' in Afrikaans.

Re: The Dutch 'letter' IJ (2001)

#27

Post by airza »

arp242 wrote: post #17

I think this is a bit of a generational thing, with older people considering ij a letter, and younger don't, "younger" being under 40/50 or so. I'm approaching 40 and I was never taught to see ij as a letter, and always considered it to be the same as eu, ou, ei, and so forth: two letters that make a single sound (digraph). The y doesn't occur in Dutch words, only in loanwords, and while loanwords with a y are relati…

Dutch is not my first language but I play wordfeud in it sometimes; I was surprised to eventually infer that the Y was not used in any native words but still available in the bag. It's been a real challenge to use it to play the ~4 loan words I know that use it.

Re: The Dutch 'letter' IJ (2001)

#28

Post by Sander_Marechal »

wkat4242 wrote: post #19
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, I have increasingly witnessed Dutch and Flemish young people using English when they talk to each other – this will usually be explained by the Dutch side as due to their lack of comfort with Flemish, but I think it is simply a result of how highly online young people are these days – highly online in English – and I suspect that bodes badly for the future of purist attitudes even among the Flemish.

I see that lack of comfort also with Flemish people. I have a Flemish neighbour (in her 50s) in Spain and while I'm Dutch I tried speaking it with her but she always switches to Spanish for some reason. But when I go to Holland these days I hear people speaking a mixture of English and Dutch on the streets. Very American-influenced English though with an accent and some expressions used improperly (I lived in Ireland…

> Trying to be a purist is to try and push back the sea.

You mean, the thing where Dutch people are absolute world champions at? :-D

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