Spelling of a capital IJ

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Post by CoBB »

No language ever did that.
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Post by Delnar_Ersike »

Although France also came pretty close... :alien:
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Post by CoBB »

In their dreams, probably. :P
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Post by Homestar »

Remember the period of time when the sun never set in Brittan.

the language still remains...
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However, if you really want to go by the most % of world, we'd all be speaking Mandarin Chinese :sickupset:

Or it could be argued that the majority of people's languages are based off Latin,
therefore Latin could also come to the most Prominently used language.
(yes I know it is currently a dead language, except in science)
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Post by hop »

1.7% represent aight
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Post by CoBB »

Homestar wrote:Or it could be argued that the majority of people's languages are based off Latin
:shock:

Well, if you only consider the northern half of the Mediterranean, this is sort of right.
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Post by King Harold »

Well, German is a Germanic language, as is Dutch for the biggest part, and English is half Germanic as well.

French and Spanish and Italian are pretty much 100% Latin though.

Anyway, in the times that the Netherlands controlled all sea trade (yes all, the English didn't even come close) Dutch was almost the world language - but it wasn't.
And also, when the US was still kind of new, they had to choose a language - as we all know they chose English, but it has been said that they only had 51% of the votes, the rest was for Dutch as main language. Had they chosen Dutch, it would now probably be the/a world language (chinese doesn't count really, they just have too many people, the language isn't spread all across the world.)
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Post by CoBB »

King Harold wrote:Anyway, in the times that the Netherlands controlled all sea trade (yes all, the English didn't even come close) Dutch was almost the world language - but it wasn't.
There has never been any language that could be called a world language, unless what you refer to as ‘world’ is only a fraction of the planet...
King Harold wrote:And also, when the US was still kind of new, they had to choose a language - as we all know they chose English, but it has been said that they only had 51% of the votes, the rest was for Dutch as main language.
Are you sure you’re not just mixing up urban legends? Anyway, the US has no official language to date, and most likely never will.
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Post by King Harold »

Not it's not that one, that's German, and German sucks (no offense Germans, but it does)
And every country must have an official language, otherwise their government could not talk. They speak English, so that must be the official language. The fact that half the people there speak Spanish has nothing to do with it, since the government is not half Spanish.

Now, the "world language" is a language that is spoken* in more countries than any other language. It's probably English now. *: not as first language.
If English isn't spoken in all countries, then at least in most.


Anyway, this doesn't have much to do the the capital IJ, which CAN not be capitalized as "Ij" because it wouldn't be an ij anymore. If you try to capitalize it that way anyway, then it will become an I + an j and the word in of which this is the first letter will lose its meaning.
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Post by CoBB »

King Harold wrote:Not it's not that one, that's German, and German sucks (no offense Germans, but it does)
I know it’s German, but I haven’t heard anything similar about other languages. I definitely don’t see any trace of such a vote on this page.
King Harold wrote:And every country must have an official language, otherwise their government could not talk.
Well, the US seems to be doing rather well without one. :P And the language of state administration is not necessarily the same as the language primarily spoken in the country, just think of some Soviet republics like Georgia.
King Harold wrote:They speak English, so that must be the official language. The fact that half the people there speak Spanish has nothing to do with it, since the government is not half Spanish.
Well, just another example: the number of Swedish speakers in Finland is proportionally less than the number of Spanish speakers in the US, yet Swedish is an official language of Finland... And an even weirder case is Slovenia, where Hungarian and Italian are also official languages, even though both account for less than half a percent of the population. In short, it’s not as simple as you think.
King Harold wrote:Now, the "world language" is a language that is spoken* in more countries than any other language. It's probably English now. *: not as first language.
Well, it’s a matter of definition from now on. To me a world language is something I can use to communicate with everyone or nearly so. Even English is very far from that.
King Harold wrote:Anyway, this doesn't have much to do the the capital IJ, which CAN not be capitalized as "Ij" because it wouldn't be an ij anymore.
Of course it can be, outside Dutch. Just as we don’t write the name of Boris Yeltsin as ‘YEltsin’ either, even though the ‘ye’ part is a single letter before transliteration.
King Harold wrote:If you try to capitalize it that way anyway, then it will become an I + an j and the word in of which this is the first letter will lose its meaning.
A foreign name has no meaning in the target language, so there’s no meaning to lose.
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Post by hop »

Why IJmuiden then?
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Post by CoBB »

hop wrote:Why IJmuiden then?
I’m not saying it can’t be, only that it doesn’t have to be. As for the rest, I’m definitely not an authority on name spelling conventions of foreign names in English text, so I don’t know anything specific.
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Post by King Harold »

The point is, a capital "Ij" doest not exist. Therefore you will not have capitalized it but messed it up.

and actually an "official" language does not exist, officialness is an illusion created by governments and bureaucrats, just like time is an illusion created by the seemingly regularity of it - but if time was to slow down suddenly your brain would think half a as fast and thus you will not see any difference.

Now back to the "IJ", personally I think a capital "IJ" is bullshit, we don't have a capital "OE" or "EU" or "UI" or "OO" etc etc either, but since it has been "IJ" for a very long time, outlanders should by now be used to it. Just like the YE by the way, from now on I will capitalize them together.
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Post by CoBB »

King Harold wrote:The point is, a capital "Ij" doest not exist. Therefore you will not have capitalized it but messed it up.
What does ‘mess up’ mean in this context? You obviously can’t apply the orthography of one language to another.
King Harold wrote:and actually an "official" language does not exist, officialness is an illusion created by governments and bureaucrats, just like time is an illusion created by the seemingly regularity of it - but if time was to slow down suddenly your brain would think half a as fast and thus you will not see any difference.
Now that was an interesting non sequitur. :)
King Harold wrote:Now back to the "IJ", personally I think a capital "IJ" is bullshit, we don't have a capital "OE" or "EU" or "UI" or "OO" etc etc either, but since it has been "IJ" for a very long time, outlanders should by now be used to it.
Why should they be used to it? What do you think, how often does a typical foreigner encounter Dutch names starting with IJ? Most people probably never see a single one in their lives.
King Harold wrote:Just like the YE by the way, from now on I will capitalize them together.
Go ahead and do so if you want to look like a badly coded online translator. ;) But then you must be consistent and carefully research every name transliterated from Cyrillic, Greek or Armenian alphabets. Also, what about names transliterated from alphabets and other writing systems without the notion of capital letters?
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Post by King Harold »

if they do not have capital letters then so bet it, no capitalizing.

"Messed up" means that it will not make any sense anymore, a capital "Ij" can not exist because it is two letters and 2 letters do not have a shared capital letter.


I'd like to write IJmuiden as Eimuiden (although it looks a little weird) because it does not make any sense to have 2 letter combinations for the ij/ei, silly Dutch..
Or do away with capital letters completely, it's not useful. If the last sentence ended on a .?or! then it is ended and there's no need to capitalize the first letter of the next sentence.

But, a capital IJ is an IJ and for an online dictionary it is very stupid to make a spelling mistake.
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