Re: OT: YAGTT

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 08:31, Lars Mathiesen <thorinn@...> wrote:
> Also, to take this further adrift: Traditional German orthography has a rule
> that simpifies triple letters to double, as in Schiffahrt = Schiff-fahrt --
> is this based in handwriting or in a reluctance of printers to create the
> fff ligature that would be needed?
That rule only applied if the triple letters are followed by a vowel;
if a consonant followed, all letters were kept (e.g. Sauerstoffflasche
< Sauerstoff + Flasche was spelled that way in the traditional
orthography, too -- and those two words, Schiff(f)ahrt and
Sauerstoffflasche are the prototypical words for explaining that rule
IME.)

On the other hand, that wouldn't use a fff ligature, either, but an ff
+ an fl ligature.

> But then I only started reading Swedish on a daily basis at the age of 46.
> Does it help if you learned reading with the system?
I don't think that there are many such words, so I can't tell.

I do know that some frequent words affected by that rule are now felt
to be (almost) monomorphemic, and so their spelling was kept with two
letters when the orthography reform came along; specifically, Mittag <
Mitte + Tag "mid-day" and Drittel < dritt- + Teil "(one) third".

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>