Just the other day, I was going through my mother's substantial bookcase for no real reason. My eye suddenly fell on a book Titled Soep lepelen met een vork. tegen de spellingshervormers by Harry Mulisch. Literally this translates to 'Spooning soup with a fork. against/versus the spelling reformers.'
For those that don't know Harry Mulisch is the Dutch literary genius of our age, who only recently passed away. He has gained considerable international recognition because of the film adaptations The Assault (based on De aanslag) and The Discovery of Heaven (based on De ontdekking van de hemel).
But this book that I found, written in 1972, highlights a piece of linguistics history I was never even aware of. At the time, spelling reformers were planning to introduce a uniform and strictly phonemic spelling of Dutch. I was never aware of this, as it was never introduced, undoubtedly partially due to the convincing point Mulisch makes in this small 75 page booklet.
Dutch already has a particularly phonemic spelling compared to other European counties (at least, if you speak the standard variety of Dutch), and it's hard for me to imagine that people were actually considering to modify our spelling this drastically.
As an example, Mulisch cites a poem of Gerrit Achterberg in the proposed spelling.
SLAAP
Uw dootgedeelte blint
zintuigen en sijzoenen;
wat ik nog van u vint
is eeuwighijt te noemen:
geheugen en gehijm
wisselen dierbaarheden
als lichamen voorheen,
en slapen zeker in.
The original text is as follows:
SLAAP
Uw doodgedeelte blindt
zintuigen en seizoenen;
wat ik nog van u vindt
is eeuwigheid te noemen:
geheugen en geheim
wisselen dierbaarheden
als lichamen voorheen,
en slapen zeker in.
As you can see, the most important changes are the uniform spelling of the [ei] diphthong as ij whereas right now it can be written both as ei and ij, and the uniform phonetic (not phonemic!) spelling of the word final /d/ as the devoiced variant t. For example, mij 'me' and mei 'may (the month)' are homophones.
Besides that, there was a huge focus on the changing of the spelling of bastaardwoorden, literally 'bastard words', apparently the common term for loanword at the time, these days it's the far more neutral leenwoorden.
Either way. As the title of the book may suggest, Mulisch was against the spellingreform, and with good reasons. First of all, some linguistic play on words would be completely lost. Harry Mulisch himself once wrote a book called De verteller (The narrator), and he also wrote a commentary on this book called De verteller verteld (The narrator narrated)
In this new spelling, this play on words would be impossible, as both De verteller vertelt (The narrator narrates) and De verteller verteld would have the exact same spelling.
Another important point is, if a spelling claims to be phonemic, it automatically implies that the spelling represents the 'correct' speech, thus, discriminating anyone who would pronounce a word differently. In a country with a lot of dialect variation such as the Netherlands, this would, of course, be a great shame.
Most of all though, Mulisch feels that, spelling change, should come from below, from the people. We have plenty of loanwords with nativized spellings. Why would we force bastaardwoorden like computer to be spelled kompjoeter, if there is a need to do so, people will do it.
He thus argues that spelling should not be ordained from above by linguistic prescriptivists, but should come from the people. That it's a virtue that we, as a Dutch people, can write 'rhythm' as rhythme, rythme and ritme without having a single one of those words look 'wrong'.
Why do we have to be so prescriptivist about spelling? Obviously, there is something to be gained from not all writing in our own dialect, as it would seriously hamper communication. But, we knew that, even before any prescriptivist told us to not write in our own dialect. Even in Middle Dutch texts, we find clear attempts by dialectal writers to write a bit more like 'the rest of the Netherlands'.
Apparently, his book worked. As, today, Dutch still has the distinction between ei and ij, and still writes a word final d.
Today we have two types of spellings. One is given to us in the form of Het Groene Boekje and the other is Het Witte Boekje. The difference being that the Green spelling is far more prescriptivistic and nonsensical, and the White spelling allowing far more variation in spelling, as long as you keep it consistent.
I applaud this second form of spelling, and hope that we will go even further in allowing some more variations. It's not important how you spell. It is important to know why you spell the way you do.
In this line of reasoning though, I would like to go even further, and argue for a less prescriptivistic view on written language in general. As an example I'd like to introduce a lovely variation that we find in the reflexive pronoun of Dutch.
In the standard dutch language 'he beats himself' becomes hij slaat zichzelf. With a fantastically imported reflexive pronoun zich from German sich, because before this introduction, the North-Holland language did not distinguish between 'him' and 'himself'. Yet, in the south, where I live, people will say hij slaat z'n eigen 'he beats his own'. Such a construction is absolutely forbidden in the written language, while it is perfectly understandable for anyone who speaks Dutch, and gives a lovely sense of regional flavour to the language.
Why can't both these variations be allowed? Why would we force a reflexive pronoun on the language if some dialects really don't have it. If there is a need for clarity, the people themselves will form a consensus and write that way. In the end, language is a means of communication, not a means of misundersanding each other (though, it certainly can be used that way). People will find the means to communicate, no governing body really needs to control this.
What does need to be taught, is a sense of 'history' and 'variation'. Make the students of the language and spelling that there is variation, and that there is a commonly accepted norm.
Of course, you need to teach children to read and write. And certainly, there's good reason to teach them some form of standard. But doesn't it make sense, to make students aware of the variation and reasoning behind some spelling conventions. If you fully understand a spelling convention, you can make your own individual or artistic choice to stray from this norm.
Mulisch does this too, both in his normal writing, and in this booklet. He, without fail, writes words like contact as kontakt and clearly points out that this is not the official spelling, but a personal choice, because he feels that the k is more representative of the sound he is trying to express. Agree with it or not, he does have a reason to be doing it, he thought about it. It would be great of people, all around the world, would develop this same sense of linguistic awareness.
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