Talk:Dutch orthography

message: Throughout this article the word "spelling" has been changed to "orthography".  I've no problem with that, because "orthography" is a nicer word anyway, but is it always what we mean?  Remember: orthography = spelling + punctuation.  In SOME places, like when we're talking about phoneme:grapheme correspondences, isn't "spelling" what we want to say?  At any rate, changing the name of the article only makes sense if punctuation is to be discussed here too. --Doric Loon 15:08, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps I was a little hasty in renaming. I thought it was more consistent with similar pages for other languages, but I had not seen the English one yet. Anyway, there is a redirect as well. But still I think it is an improvement. "Spelling" is related to single words. In my view when explaining reasons for the spelling, the system behind it, and relations between words, "orthography" is a better word. −Woodstone 19:49, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)
OK  --Doric Loon 05:12, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: I have rephrased the part on long/short vowels keeping both our viewpoints in. I also added some examples to show why it is really complex for non-natives. −Woodstone 20:42, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
Yeh, that seems a reasonable solution.  I still can't see that the phrase "length is not phonemic" is meaningful.  If two sounds are phonemes, meaning is carried by all the phonetic distinctions between them.  To say that some of those distinctions are phonemic and others not seems arbitrary.  But at the end of the day, that is not a problem that gives me sleepless nights.  The important thing for me was that length remains as one way of looking at the problem, because without it, cross-language comparisons and especially the historical perspective are seriously hindered.  We have no idea how the phonemes of PIE were realised phonetically, but we do know that quantitative distinctions are one of the keys to understanding the whole language family.  Shalom,  --Doric Loon 19:57, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Orthography v spelling

message: The last para of the reform section is:
: Starting from 9 October there was a new version of the green book, with some reformed rules, not everybody was happy with it.
It asks more questions than it answers: 9 October what year? (I'd assume 2005 based on when it was added, but seek confirmation.) What changes were made? Why are people unhappy with them? If someone knows the details, could they please elaborate on them? —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 03:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I reformed the sentence and added the year, and Woodstone has added some more information on what the changes actually were. FoekeNoppert 19:50, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reform 

message: We have a historical section that discusses Dutch spelling in the Middle Ages up to 1500 -- and another that discusses spelling reforms starting in 1804.  What about the period 1500-1804, obviously a very notable one for the Netherlands?  Shouldn't something at least be said about what Dutch spelling looked like before the 1804 reforms? RandomCritic 21:33, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Missing section?

message: In the section Regularity, it is stated that oe is pronounced as u. Now I may not be a linguist, but dutch is my native language. And oe is not pronounced as u, they are quite different. This should be changed. -- Pepve 15:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What is meant is that the sound represented by oe in boek is written as /u/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet (see the section on vowels there, and this, with examples. Iblardi 15:45, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm, I misread that, I feel embarrassed now. Sorry. -- Pepve 19:41, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: O well, we all make silly mistakes from time to time, this user included. No need for embarrassment. Iblardi 19:49, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oe is not u 

message: According to for example Vandale (the most popular dictionary), the short u is transcribed [Y], not [œ]. In the Standard language, I've never heard u pronounced like a short (undiphtongized) ui ([œ:]).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grytolle (talk • contribs) 19:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  short u 

message: "Dutch orthography has the reputation of being particularly logical. For the foreign learner it is relatively easy as, once one knows the system, one can almost always deduce pronunciation from spelling, if proper names and foreign loan-words are discounted." Sorry, folks, but that's a little silly. Spanish is particularly logical. Portuguese, even, is particularly logical. Dutch? No. I think another word is necessary. InFairness (talk) 22:07, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe the "fairly logical" was looking at it from an English perspective? But yeah, as a Dutchman I would agree that when you look at it from the perspective of a Spaniard or a Portuguese, the spelling system seems insane. There are letters that influence how other letters are pronounced (although Romance languages often have this problem as well, particularly with the c) and some sounds have multiple spellings, like au/ou and ei/ij. Compare it to Latin and weep.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.39 (talk) 02:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The system might be a bit more complex then in Spanish or Portuguese. But one A4 sheet paper is still enough to explain the spelling to pronunciation system for 99% of the words. The only difficulties are loan words (like in any language) and few composed words (such as bom-melding<->bommel-ding). I have to agree though that pronunciation to spelling is much more complicated and irregular.Nico (talk) 11:56, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: 99% is a bit of an overestimate. The unstressed e introduces a lot of ambiguity. Without knowing the words beforehand there is no way to know that vergaderen is pronounced like vergadurren, not vergadeeren and gezellig is guzzellig not geezellig. In fact, even for words without an e, without knowing where the stress lies you cannot pronounce words correctly. In Spanish and Portuguese stress can always be derived from the spelling. Also you often need to know how to decompose words in syllables (kli-maat but klim-op).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.247.68 (talk) 18:22, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logical? 

message: The article uses ʊ but Wikipedia's article on ʊ is crappy.
And it suggests that ʊ is the Latin Upsilon, which suggests a completely different sound than what it must have to be appropriate here. (But I think the assertion that ʊ is the Latin Upsilon may be wrong.)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.39 (talk) 02:32, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I pronounce it as [kʊəʁ] myself, not as [kɔːʁ], it sounds very different to me from the vowel in English core. CodeCat (talk) 12:17, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I pronouce it with ɔː as do most people I know. I live in Leiden. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard your ʊə pronunciation, at least not in general non-dialectical Dutch.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 22:35, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  ʊ 

message: Double Vowels and Consonants — Instead of 'Luuk', how about 'huur' (hire) and 'huurde' (hired)? SP1R1TM4N (talk) 19:21, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is it a better example? CodeCat (talk) 19:42, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better example? 

message: * The letter immediately following a word-initial apostrophe is never capitalized: "'s Avonds is zij nooit thuis." (She is never at home in the evening.)
Why is Avonds capitalized, and how is this an example of the rule that such words are "never capitalized"?  --  Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 06:26, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The letter immediatley following the apostrophe is the 's', which is clearly not capitalized. The 'A' is capitalized instead, serving as the starting letter of the sentence (though it strictly is not). Should the sentence be phrased 'Zij is 's avonds nooit thuis' (which has the exact same meaning), the 'a' is not capitalized either. Richard 08:25, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Confusing example

message: The single digraph character ĳ is deprecated by Unicode; there is no technical or notional difference between the combined character and the separate letters i and j. Dutch treats i and j as separate letters, and they are always typed that way. So I don't think that such a distinction should be made in the picture that shows variants of ij and y. The joining of the i and j is a font issue, and is not a separate character. CodeCat (talk) 19:59, 20 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Dutch treats i and j as separate letters' might be simplified; among other things, capitalization (IJssel) and stressmarks come to mind. Furthermore, Dutch is not always typed - there is such a thing as writing. In writing, ij is often written as one symbol, even if the rest of the letters are not joined. Even though the Unicode character is deprecated and in computers, 'ij' is the coding of choice, it remains a (one) digraph and not two letters. Richard 08:46, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know enough to have an opinion on whether "ij" should be listed as its own letter, but I think the name for "y" and "ij" be different in the alphabet. The wikipedia article on the "ij" digraph mentions that it is often called "Griekse ij". I think either the name for "y" should be changed or the article should mention something about how and why the names of "y" and "ij" are the same. As it is now, it looks like a typo, with two consecutive letters having the exact same name. Emmy571 (talk) 20:59, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  ij digraph versus separate letters 

message: We are told "The letter E is the most frequently used letter in the Dutch alphabet, usually representing a schwa sound". It may well represent a schwa sound more often than anything else, but that isn't the same thing as "usually". Take the following sentences, from the Dutch version of this article: "Hoewel de vastgelegde spelling in zowel Nederland als Vlaanderen alleen verplicht is voor overheid en onderwijs, geven veel taalgebruikers er de voorkeur aan haar eveneens te volgen. De richtlijn die hierbij in de regel als uitgangspunt wordt genomen is de Woordenlijst Nederlandse taal, beter bekend als het Groene Boekje." In the quoted sentences the letter "e" occurs a total of 53 times: 7 times as part of a diphthong such as "oe", "ie" or "eu", 8 times as a short, open sound similar to "e" in English "bed", 9 times as a long, closed sound similar to "ay" in English "say", and 29 times as a "schwa" (the second vowel in English "father") - just under 55% of the total. Even if we disregard the diphthongs (in which the letter "e" is not pronounced separately), we get a total of 46 times, of which 29 are a "schwa" - just over 63% of the total. Certainly the most common sound in both cases, but "usually" suggests a much clearer majority - not just something between half and two-thirds, but something more like 80 or 90%. Question: is it even relevant in this context to mention how often Dutch "e" represents a schwa sound? 213.127.210.95 (talk) 17:16, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Not at all. That remark is (was, as I've just removed it) dubious at best. Richard 12:01, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of "e" 

message: ‘Hè’ is an erfwoord.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.61.180.106 (talk) 22:30, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diacritics in loanwords 

message: IJ comes before Y, not after 188.206.74.47 (talk) 18:07, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Strange, I'd thought it came after I and J! Looking around, any source for the alphabet that I find that does list them as separate letters does put IJ before Y, so, as you've requested, I changed the order. Largoplazo (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Order of IJ and Y