Spelling of a capital IJ

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King Harold
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Spelling of a capital IJ

Post by King Harold »

I recently found this on http://www.answers.com/topic/ijsselmeer
answers.com wrote:Ijs·sel·meer or IJs·sel·meer (ī'səl-mâr', -mār') pronunciation

A shallow, dike-enclosed lake of northwest Netherlands. It was formed from the Zuider Zee by the construction of two dams (completed in 1932). Much fertile farmland has been reclaimed from the lake since that time.
Ij is NOT the correct spelling, but it comes first.
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hop
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Post by hop »

Yeah we learnt that in what, first year of elementary school?

http://rudhar.com/lingtics/nlij_en.htm

lol (click) they got it right on their own entries for ij
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Post by King Harold »

And they can write IJmuiden with a capital IJ.
But not IJsselmeer..
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Post by CoBB »

Note that as long as you are talking about a language other than Dutch, it is not at all obvious whether IJ or Ij is the correct capitalisation.
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Post by King Harold »

Het IJsselmeer is in the middle of the Netherlands though
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Post by CoBB »

Sure it is. But that doesn't mean that the spelling of its name cannot change across language boundaries. And IJ being unique to Dutch makes this even more probable.
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Post by King Harold »

An IJ is not allowed to be capitalized as Ij.
And in most other languages it makes no sense not to follow this rule since they don't use the ij anyway.
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Post by CoBB »

King Harold wrote:An IJ is not allowed to be capitalized as Ij.
In Dutch. But again, there's no such constraint in other languages. Just for the record, in Hungarian we normally use Ij for Dutch names starting with IJ.
King Harold wrote:And in most other languages it makes no sense not to follow this rule since they don't use the ij anyway.
Who said languages are logical? :)

You could as well say that e.g. the spelling of Vienna is incorrect, and it should be written as Wien.
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hop
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Post by hop »

Then why spell IJmuiden according to Dutch fashion? Or IJ for that matter..
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Post by threefingeredguy »

Wī nŏt spěl ěv'rē wûrd thə fə-nět'ĭk wā?
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Post by CoBB »

threefingeredguy wrote:Wī nŏt spěl ěv'rē wûrd thə fə-nět'ĭk wā?
Which phonetic system and which dialect? :P I propose writing in Brummy with IPA letters. :lol:
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Post by hop »

World language should be Dutch anyway.
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Post by Homestar »

I'm glad you stated that in English :mrgreen:
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Post by benryves »

The majority of people who purport to speak English clearly don't in any case. ;)
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Post by King Harold »

Dutch once came really close to becoming the world language..
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