Spelling of a capital IJ

[CoBB]

"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.

But that’s the point, it never made any sense in a non-Dutch text.

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.

I find them very useful. They make text much easier to read. I absolutely loathe the practice of writing long passages in all smalls. Furthermore, punctuation is not as clear either, and those signs can have other functions besides ending the sentence.

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

It’s an English language dictionary, not a Dutch one, so unless there is a rule about capitalising IJ that way in English, it’s not a mistake.

[DarkAuron]

Arguing over this is very trivial..

[CoBB]

Don’t do it then. I don’t agree with that anyway; writing names correctly in other languages is anything but trivial.

[King Harold]

But correctly like they are in the other language or following the rules of the language you write in?

Ijsselmeer is not easily readable because the I and j look split up, and what reason do the English have to de-capitalize the J?

Besides, they put "IJsselmeer" as second option, as if it isn't used as much as "Ijsselmeer".

"Ijsselmeer" fEels a bIt liKe tHiS, random capital letters make things harder to read.

[CoBB]

But correctly like they are in the other language or following the rules of the language you write in?

Well, special cases aside, you need to follow the rules of the language the text is in. I do like for instance how Wikipedia gives you the original spelling and the pronunciation for many names in parentheses. But outside parentheses and quotation marks the host language provides the standard.

Ijsselmeer is not easily readable because the I and j look split up, and what reason do the English have to de-capitalize the J?

They probably don’t. But I guess to most people not speaking Dutch it rather looks like a typo, as if you had been pressing shift for too long.

Besides, they put "IJsselmeer" as second option, as if it isn't used as much as "Ijsselmeer".

Which simply suggests to me that both are acceptable in English.

"Ijsselmeer" fEels a bIt liKe tHiS, random capital letters make things harder to read.

It’s always what you’re used to that you’ll find the easiest.

[King Harold]

do you have to make it that hard..

well, I still think they should have put "IJsselmeer" first, since it's the preferred spelling in the language the word comes from.

The (Gelderse) IJssel is river, and a 'meer' is a lake, just so you know.
There is even a province called "Overijssel" which is 'on the other side of the IJssel' - well if you're west from it and looking east..

Not so long ago the IJsselmeer was the Zuiderzee (='southern sea', it was right in the middle of the Netherlands though), but 'we' made the Afsluitdijk (closing dike?) and since the IJssel is the biggest river flowing into the lake, it was called IJsselmeer.
The name "IJssel" is very old, and wikipeadia knows how to spell it properly. If the English spell IJssel with a capital IJ, then why not spell IJsselmeer with a capital IJ? It's the same name, but with "meer" added because it's the lake, not the river.

[DigiTan]

[CoBB]

Good way to revive a topic.

Though I have to say I never understood such posts in any topic. If you’re not interested, why bother? I could post something similar nearly in every thread here, but for some strange reason I don’t feel the slightest temptation to do so...

[King Harold]

DigiTan, comon, how would you feel if a in a certain language Dallas would be written as dallAS because they have silly capitalization rules?

If you still don't "give a damn" about capitalization then forget about capital letters and don't use them. If you feel any temptation to use them at the beginning of names and sentences you obviously DO give a damn.

[benryves]

DigiTan, comon [sic], how would you feel if a in a certain language Dallas would be written as dallAS because they have silly capitalization rules?

Nothing wrong with that. It's only coincidence that "IJsselmeer" looks similar to "Ijsselmeer" in any case. Caerdydd (Cardiff) is the captial city of Cymru (Wales), München (Munich) is a city in Deutschland (Germany) and I'm sure you're familiar with Den Haag (The Hague).

Place names are usually translated into English, so it makes sense that IJsselmeer is translated to Ijsselmeer when written in English texts. I don't see anyone getting stroppy because the French refer to England as Angleterre rather than its "proper" name.

[King Harold]

Translation I can see, but change of capitalization?
(Den Haag isn't even translated properly, it should be more like "Of the Hague", 'den' does not mean 'the')

Angleterre is a good translation though, it means "Angeln land" and the "Angeln"/"Anglii" were the people who moved to England (which is named after them obviously).

An IJ however does not translate to an Ij.
And IJsselmeer would translate to Ijssellake. (yes, it would have an Ij, because it is translated.)

IJsselmeer, IJmuiden and IJsvrij* will probably never be spelled right in other languages. Fine, but an online dictionary should know better.

*: not a city, and it does not mean 'ice free' it is a day off because there is ice. "ijs vrij" however would mean 'free of ice'. See http://www.spatiegebruik.nl/ for more information..

[benryves]

It is not a mere change of capitalisation, it is a change of spelling. IJ is a digraph, and in Dutch (at least, in the Netherlands) can be regarded as a single letter. In English, where this digraph doesn't exist, it is expanded to two letters. Hence the uppercase equivalent of "ij" as a single letter is "IJ", and when it's two letters (as in English) you get "Ij" instead.

[King Harold]

That makes it even worse, not translated but misspelled.

So you're saying, when they 'cast' an "IJ" from a Dutch letter to an English one it has to expand and then the J has be changed into a j? Why would they decapitalize it?

[benryves]

The word is now spelled "i.j.s.s.e.l.m.e.e.r", not "ij.s.s.e.l.m.e.e.r", and according to the English rules you only capitalise the first letter. ("IJsselmeer" also only has the first letter capitalised, with "ij" being a that letter).

As I have already mentioned, it's just a case of taking a word from another language and applying English rules to it when talking about it in English. That's how English (and many other languages) work when dealing with foreign words.

[coelurus]

I for one have never seen any dutch word like IJ* in my life.

How do people pronounce the name of capital in Sweden, Stockholm? Should I request audio sample and act like a smartass because not everybody pronounces it the way we Swedes do?
Think about Romanji, Japanese in roman characters, that's a tad bit chunkier to handle than converting a silly IJ...