From: John Cowan (jcowan@reutershealth.com)
Date: Fri Mar 07 2003 - 10:23:34 EST
Pim Blokland scripsit:
> The ij is considered by some to be one letter in Dutch, and when written
> down, an "i" and a "j" together look very much like a written y with
> diaeresis. (See fonts like Script MT.) So I can understand foreigners
> getting confused and encoding it that way (as a y with diaeresis). But it
> shouldn't.
Well, we have online a large sample of the *printed* (not script-style)
handwriting of the well-known computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra
(a native speaker of Dutch, though perhaps of Frisian origin?) at
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/indexEWDnums.html . Let us look
at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd12xx/EWD1235.PDF , which I
choose because although it is in Dutch, it is from about 1995 when he
was writing almost entirely in English.
We see that although Dijkstra scrupulously separates all his other
letters, he usually ligatures the dots of "ij" into a sort of macron
or inverted breve, and indeed he ligatures the non-dot portions into
something quite indistinguishable from a "y". We indeed find his own name
written indiscriminately "Dijkstra" and "D˙kstra", showing that he thought
of the ligatured and non-ligatured forms as the same thing. The word
"maatschappij" even appears quite dotless, making it "maatschappy".
-- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com Please leave your values | Check your assumptions. In fact, at the front desk. | check your assumptions at the door. --sign in Paris hotel | --Cordelia Vorkosigan
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