timtom
Posts: 2358
Joined: 1/29/2003 From: Aarhus, Denmark Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Terminus Heh... Since they're now letting kids out of school (high and otherwise) without actually teaching them anything in the spelling, punctuation and grammar department, that rot is spreading. I've seen some horrific things with people in my business school... In another age, when preparing my BA Thesis on the 18th century Danish East-India Company, I read some of the logbooks of the Chinamen held at the Royal Danish National Archives. One particular ship, the Charlotte Amalie, bound for Canton via Batavia, the Sumatra- and Indochina coast in 1781, went through four captains during its journey due to disease. Each captain had his own, idiosyncratic way of spelling. In Denmark at any rate, the idea of spelling in the modern, absolutist sense is a late 19th century one, intimately tied to the modern, centralised, one-size-fits-all state (as opposed to the essentially medieval, centrifugal society). In the case of Denmark, and most other state I would guess, the dialect spoken in and around the capital formed the basis the "correct" written language, at the expense of, fx, that spoken by myself and (I presume) Mr. T. Spelling is a construct, if there ever was one. The Charlotte Amalie incidentally was sold to the Navy in 1800 and subsequently used as a blockship in the defence of Copenhagen. Captured and burned, courtesy of the (British) Royal Navy, in the Battle of Copenhagen the following year. I'm sure Speedy's to blame somehow...
< Message edited by timtom -- 6/30/2006 4:03:21 PM >
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Where's the Any key?
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