Grammatica - loco

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vowel was required or not, e.g. beenen ‘legs’, but beter ‘better’,
boomen ‘trees’ but boter ‘butter’. Needless to say, the Dutch found
this distinction confusing, and its abolition was long overdue.
The above archaic spellings are still sometimes found in place and
people’s names as the spelling changes were not deemed necessarily
to apply to proper nouns:
’s-Hertogenbosch, de Nederlandsche Bank, Boschma,
Heerenveen, Hoogeveen
(c) In Belgium an archaic spelling of long a (now written aa or a),
namely ae, continued to be used in placenames until 1946, but was
then abolished, e.g. Schaerbeek, Laeken. The French spelling of
Flemish towns containing ae took no notice of this reform; thus the
French write Schaerbeek and Waterloo where the Flemings now
write Schaarbeek and Waterlo. The combination ae can nevertheless
still be found in personal names, even in The Netherlands, e.g. Van
Haeringen. 1
(d) In some proper nouns the archaic combination gh is found, but it does
not differ in pronunciation from g, e.g. Breughel, Van Gogh, Veghel.
2.2
Recent changes to Dutch spelling
Modern Dutch spelling is based on a spelling reform that was introduced
in 1947 (1946 in Belgium). The recommendations appeared in 1954 in
the Woordenlijst van de Nederlandse Taal—samengesteld in opdracht van
de Nederlandse en de Belgische regering (’s-Gravenhage, 1954). This reform
abolished the now archaic spelling conventions mentioned above. Het
Groene Boekje, as this publication is known colloquially because of its
compact format and green cover, attracted a great deal of criticism over
the subsequent forty years, particularly with respect to the spelling of
loanwords, then called bastaardwoorden in Dutch. The most controversial
aspect of the new spelling was that it allowed many loanwords to be
written in one of two ways (e.g. cultuur or kultuur, succes or sukses,
organisatie or organizatie), while making clear that one of the two was
‘preferred’; this was known as de voorkeurspelling (preferred spelling). A
later spelling reform in 1995, which was introduced into schools from
1 In similar vein the spelling uy or uij is archaic for ui and eij is archaic for ei; they
are commonly found in personal names, e.g. Kruyskamp, Meijer.
Recent
changes to
Dutch
spelling
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