{"id":371,"date":"2013-10-14T10:22:20","date_gmt":"2013-10-14T09:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=371"},"modified":"2013-10-14T10:22:20","modified_gmt":"2013-10-14T09:22:20","slug":"growing-pains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesusromerotrillo.es\/?p=371","title":{"rendered":"Growing pains"},"content":{"rendered":"

LANGUAGE learners must resign themselves to making very public, very silly mistakes sooner or later. It\u2019s an occupational hazard. Regular readers will remember that I\u2019ve begun dipping my feet in Dutch<\/a>. After a few weeks, I can now get my most basic wants and needs across with little trouble. I\u2019m only just starting, but I\u2019m not exactly helpless anymore.<\/p>\n

Imagine my frustration, then, when nobody understood me when I tried to speak about the lake in Amsterdam (IJ), the large artificial lake north of Amsterdam (IJsselmeer), or a local road in The Hague (IJsclubsweg). I even got blank stares when I mentioned the neighbourhood ice cream shop (IJssalon). Now, my pronunciation is far from perfect, but it’s usually workable. Unfortunately, I had been pronouncing the first two letters in each, IJ<\/em>, as initials: I-J, or (roughly) \u201cee-yay\u201d in Dutch. Apparently that\u2019s as incomprehensible as referring to this newspaper as The E-C-onomist<\/em>. IJ<\/em> is, it turns out, a digraph in Dutch. That means it\u2019s used together to represent one sound, pronounced (roughly) \u201cay\u201d. It\u2019s a fixed digraph, so when it appears at the beginning of a word, both I<\/em> and J<\/em> are capitalised together. In contrast, we might write of the Ij<\/em>, the Ijsselmeer<\/em> or…Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n

via Johnson http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/21579195?fsrc=rss<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LANGUAGE learners must resign themselves to making very public, very silly mistakes sooner or later. It\u2019s an occupational hazard. Regular readers will remember that I\u2019ve begun dipping my feet in Dutch. After a few weeks, I can now get my most basic wants and needs across with little trouble. I\u2019m only just starting, but I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[75],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t