Re: Official language question!

En réponse à Thomas Leigh :


>So now I have to ask: there was a another Dutchspelling reform? In the
>last decade?
Indeed. IIRC it was in 1994, but I may be off by one or two years.

>  You realise now, that since I'd never heard of this either, until you
> mentioned it, that you're going to have to provide details of this one too.
That reform was less important than the previous one. It mainly consisted
of getting rid of orthographical doublets for words of foreign origin by
adopting the (until now only "preferred spelling") spelling in original
language as the only valid one (for instance, there was "buro-bureau" and
"kado-cadeau". After the reform, only the French spellings "bureau" and
"cadeau" are valid now), and modifying some orthographical rules for the
writing of compounds, especially the infamous middle -n-, changing some
words like "pannekoek" (pancake) into "pannenkoek" (with silent -n-. This
is a compound of "pannen"+"koek", and final -n is usually silent in Dutch).
The new rule to put the n or not is supposed to be simple, but it actually
confuses a lot of people ;))) . I myself don't know it (it has IIRC
something to do with whether the first part of the compound in naturally
singular or plural according to the sense of the compound, but IIRC it
doesn't always work ;))) ). The presence or absence of hyphens in compounds
was also modified (former spelling had IIRC "zeeënd" for what is now
"zee-end").

>:) One must be well-informed about the list's official language!
Indeed! :))

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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