Re: Official language question!

Thomas wrote:

>>>Greetings,
I was in a second-hand book shop yesterday afternoon and came across a copy
of the old "Teach Yourself Dutch" for $2, so I bought it. Not a bad deal, I
thought! Anyway, the first chapter, which deals with pronunciation and
spelling, makes reference to a spelling reform in 1947 which cleaned up the
"cumbersome and old-fashioned" spelling which had been used up until that
time. That piqued my curiosity, so I was wondering if any of our Dutch
listmembers would be able to give any details of that old orthography, and
how it differs from the current one.

Dank je wel! :)
<<<

Well, since no one has replied yet, I hope I can shine some light on this
subject, eventhough I don't know much about it.

To start with, words that ended in */sk/ (in Proto-Germanic) ended up
in [sX] and eventually (nowadays) in [s]. Nevertheless, the [sX] was
still written as 'sch', e.g. 'visch' "fish", which is now just 'vis' [vIs].

Also, there were many double vowels written in situations where one
vowel could do: 'zoo' [zo] "so" has become 'zo'.

I think these are the most important reforms.
Maybe Jan knows some more or can correct m eif I am wrong?

Rob

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