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 _About
the spelling:
We
have to defend the way we've used the English language
and it's spelling in the presentation of this
knowledge. My native tongue is Dutch and the Dutch
have the peculiar habit to change their spelling every
couple of years, not rarely resulting in debates on
the necessity of keeping the language up to date at
the one hand and the importance of keeping to
traditions at the other. As members of the European
Union we also tend to contribute by continuing this
discussion in English, and that also affects the way
we deal in this book with the english language. The
Dutch think it an advantage to be at least bilingual
and most of the Dutch speak or at least up to a point
understand English next to their own tongue. Also for
the sake of the modesty of the presentday dominance of
the 'worldpower' of the U.S.A. the U.K. and Australia
combined, is it important to prove that they are not
the only ones in control of the English language, as
the lingua franca of this planet, and that it even
would be good for themselves too to have the advantage
of the relativizing effect of a second tongue.
Practically that could be Hindi maybe for the English
and Spanish for the Americans. But that is to them.
Sure is that for the worldorder at hand we cannot
afford us the arrogance of a onesided
language-control. That kind of arrogance could turn
against the english-speaking nations and thus spoil
for the world this great opportunity in history to
understand and convene for a new planetary concept of
a multicultural order. I personally consider it a
great sacrifice to the world to forsake the national
control over one's own language by advocating that
language everywhere without further control. This kind
of sharing is beneficial but also dangerous, since the
one sharing the language that is native to him, as if
it where some religion, factually missing the
relativizing, might think himself superior in the
command... To the Dutch is the English language,
besides their historical scientific contributions in
physics and philosophy and their close and historical
ties in association with the United Kingdom, the City
of New York and with Australian and new Zealand
expatriates, of great importance also because of their
geographical position as traders living by the
commercial harbor to the estuary of the rhine, the
main river of Europe cutting through Holland.
So
we have a bit of an adamant idea of the language too.
Because the majority of the English-speaking people of
the world use the american spelling, the use of a
typical z in e.g. realized in stead of an s was used.
From our own tongue we do not unnecessarily separate
words as much as the native English did so far and
thus do I tend to write words as e.g. selfrealization
or other selfevident contaminations more easily as one
word. Also in adjectives do I myself, also contrary to
the conventions on this in my own language, on
principle not use capital letters. E.g. in christian
values is the word christian submitted to the word
values and thus not of capitalization; we thus have
valuable Christians managing christian values. Thus
they find their place in submission to the (modest)
values. The same way we have english worldcitizens and
worldly Englishmen. The habit of spelling adjectives
with capital letters we consider a germanism and the
habit of separating words in stead of using
contaminations we consider a lexical kind of ignorance
that I, I must admit, am often also guilty of. But in
the latter respect I'm not that consequent. Also for
the new term 'filognosy' a new spelling is adopted as
opposed to the traditional use of the ph for a spoken
f. I'd rather spell the usual I also as i, but not
being such a great hero I've forgotten about that. For
the rest I ask for your possibly native english
patience with a maybe foreign style of saying things
up unto sometimes literally translated sayings and
proverbs. It is never wrong, and sometimes even fun,
to learn from another idea of culture and to be in
respect with some literary freedom of expression.
After all is to express oneself in a language a free
art also. Please don't see my lack of deference as
something self-righteous but rather as a matter of
principle obliging me.
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