Dutch IJ with dots

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

@Paul van der Laan Don't be shy about giving honest feedback about my post of November 10. But do keep an open mind, as @Laurenz van Gaalen was apparently able to do.

Paul van der Laan

@Hrant H. Papazian Interesting suggestion, but as a native reader the single acute on IJ looks like a mistake and would distract me from reading.

That is my honest opinion. If you want to frame this as being small minded because you don't get the answer you like then that is your prerogative.

John Savard

I think that Hrant acknowledges that a single acute might not look appropriate to native speakers of Dutch at this time.

The way I understand his viewpoint is this: that it would be worthwhile for the Dutch language community to make the effort to get used to it, because having "ij" as a single letter makes Dutch unique, and we need to promote and maintain the uniqueness of the writing system of each language.

Essentially, it seems to me that he feels that for the Dutch to see themselves as part of a larger Latin script community, rather than having a script of their very own which just happens to be derived from the Latin script like those of some of their neighbors, is to leave the Dutch essentially defenseless against changes to their script (and language, and culture) brought about by the huge dominance of the English language in the world today.

Try as I might, I can't see his concerns as completely invalid, even though my sympathies are in the direction of having the people of the industrialized democracies concentrate on what unites them rather than what divides them. But in the specific case at issue, I think it would be a very long time before "ij" achieves the same status as "yerry" (Russian Ы) even if the Netherlands were in isolation from the rest of the world; and, given that it isn't, a considerable amount of effort would be required to take the Dutch script in that direction.

Paul van der Laan

@John Savard: Sorry but you lost me here.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Paul van der Laan said:

If you want to frame this as being small minded because you don't get the answer you like then that is your prerogative.

I was brought up to fight that tendency tooth & nail. Thank you for your honest opinion.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

John Savard said:

The way I understand his viewpoint is this: ....

Superbly expressed.

Ben Blom

it would be worthwhile for the Dutch language community to make the effort to get used to it

It is silly for someone from outside the Dutch language community, to tell the Dutch how to improve their spelling.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Ben Blom said:
It is silly for someone from outside the Dutch language community, to tell the Dutch how to improve their spelling.

Absolutely false. If you were to hold back your ideas of how to improve Armenian, you would be doing a disservice to Armenians, world culture, and yourself.

"The authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
— Galileo Galilei

John Savard

I don't have any suggestions for improving Armenian, but I think that the Latin alphabet should rip off letters from Cyrillic, or otherwise add new ones, so as to have as many as Armenian does - in order to be able to represent the additional consonants found in Eastern Armenian and Chinese that currently have no equivalent in the Latin alphabet.

The basis for this is that using diacritics instead to transliterate Chinese, at least, has tended to prove unsatisfactory in practice.

There's no reason, though, for the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets not to also attempt to grow in this direction - so as to make every script capable of competently transliterating every language. Of course, isomorphism would cut two ways, as while it would make every script suitable for quoting from other languages, it would also reduce the barrier to switching to a dominant script.

The good news, of course, is even if letters allowing Armenian to be written in the Latin script were in some sense "added" to it, since they're not needed for the languages now using the Latin script, they wouldn't be used enough, or available enough, to create any real threat to the Armenian script.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Plus this one from three years ago tomorrow:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/underware/15841979861/in/photolist-q95vXx-q8UhFP-q8UhGv
Hey aren't the Dutch fans of handwriting yo?

Artur Schmal

Definitely fans of handwriting! But this I dislike.


This picture was taken in my daughter's classroom. She's learning to read and write. They are learning connected and disconnected writing. Apparently y becomes ij in jointed script and stays y in disconnected script. Time for a talk with the teacher.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Artur Schmal said:
Time for a talk with the teacher.

Good luck dude...

John Savard

Artur Schmal said:

Apparently y becomes ij in jointed script and stays y in disconnected script.

I think I had seen something earlier in this thread that showed the Dutch ij becoming y in Dutch handwriting.

So, although this seems bizarre to me as well, apparently it is considered correct in the Netherlands - at least in some quarters.