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Re: Odd orthography

From:B.Philip.Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Wednesday, September 23, 1998, 19:58
At 09:59 -0500 on 23.9.1998, Terrence Donnelly wrote:
[snip]

> Do any other languages announce political or lifestyle affiliation > merely by spelling changes? > > -- Terry
In Swedish it used to be the case (up to and including the forties, roughly) that if there was a possible distingtive Old Orthography spelling of your surname but you used the New Orthography spelling this signalled that you had radical leanings (politically, literarily, culturally, and usually all of it! :) Few went as far as one of the banner-bearers of the 1907 orthography reform. He spelled both his first name and his surname _phonetically_ called himself Fridtjuv B"arj, but I'm pretty sure his mom and dad had called him Fridtjof Berg. It is to be noted that the word _berg_ "mountain" wasn't affected by the reform! Nowadays one can't just alter the spelling of ones surname, so the spellings of contemporary people at best give a hint that their grandfathers or great-grandfathers had a radical streak at one time. /BP B.Philip. Jonsson <bpj@...> Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant (Tacitus) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------