Re: creolego "cannibalizes" AND "phagocytates" (wasRe: Gaelic

En réponse à Boudewijn Rempt <boud@...>:

>
> For instance, it isn't the way children are taught in school, and
> haven't
> been taught in school since the seventies.
Maybe in Deventer, but it's not true in the rest of the country. I've seen it
among my colleagues, who come from about everywhere in the country, with the
nephews of my friend (from 7 to 11-years-old) who were taught that "lange ij"
was a single letter, and thus written so even in unconnected writing and
capitalised as a single letter, with about everyone I've seen writing a "lange
ij".

 Nowadays they learn to
> differentiate between 'lekkere ei' and 'vieze ij' -- tasty ei and
> nasty
> ij.
They have a strange nomenclature in Deventer. At least, it certainly doesn't
reflect how things are taught elsewhere in the country.

 They learn that these sounds consist of a sequence of two letters,
> and that they are not one letter, not even ij.
Totally untrue. "ij" is taught to be a single letter, unlike "ei". If your
daughters are taught otherwise, then they are the ones in the minority.

>
> Ever since WordPerfect 4.2 added the possibility to enter ij as one
> letter (probably induced to do so by an old and out of date
> description
> of Dutch), people have riduculed others who actually used that letter.
>
That's absolutely not true! Maybe it's your opinion on the use of the
letter "ij", but it's not the opinion of anyone else. I've always received the
opinion that writing "ij" as two different letters is not considered incorrect
per se, but will look strange to most people, and during my Dutch classes we
were asked to always write "ij" as a single letter, because otherwise it would
look obvious that we are foreigners. Using that letter has never been
ridiculed. If that's what they do in Deventer, then they have strange habits.

> It's quite possible that some old-fashioned printers still use a
> ligature
> ij, but that won't be apparatent at all, since the combination is very
> rare otherwise, so the possible negative kerning won't show up.
>
Why are you keeping on saying that the combination is old-fashioned? It's not.
I've seen it about everywhere, it's quite obvious when letters are well
separated. And I've *never* seen "ij" written as two different letters, except
in cases where it's impossible to do otherwise (for instance with typewriter
fonts, when no special space is put between letters). Look even at a game like
Lingo, the popular game _par excellence_. They still consider the "lange ij" to
be a single letter (which always appears as a capital J with a small I in the
top left hand corner). If what you said was true, nobody in this game would
spell words using the "lange ij" (or simply called "ij"). But they still do so,
whatever the age of the participants (and I've seen participants younger than
me). You seem to consider the "ij" to be old-fashioned, but you're quite in the
minority here in the Netherlands. So please don't show your opinion as if it
was the normal way of doing things in Holland, because it's not. As I said, I
just have to go on the street to see how wrong you are.

And as I said, I'm sorry to have to correct you, but I see the facts nearly as
soon as I get out of my apartment, and so cannot accept your opinion as facts.
The facts are very clear and show quite a different story.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Reply