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Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde (written in 1981) is a book dedicated to peculiarities of the Dutch language. It was written by "Battus", one of many pseudonyms used by Hugo Brandt Corstius. The title means "Upperlandic Language and Linguistics", where "Upperlandic" is word play on "Netherlandic".
The book has ten chapters, numbered 0 through 9, which use the Dutch language in a humorous way. Chapters are interleaved, with all odd-numbered pages belonging to different chapters than the adjacent even-numbered pages. This confusion is intentional. The two sets of pages are printed in different fonts.
Chapter 0, titled "Programme and Constitution of Upperlandic" explains that "Upperlandic is Dutch on vacation. Upperlandic is Dutch without the awful utility generally attached to that language. Upperlandic words and sentences look like their Dutch counterparts at first glance. But then, Upperlandic is meant for the second glance."
Other chapters of the book include various forms of word play such as palindromes, spoonerisms, the shortest possible sentence to include all letters, the shortest and longest possible words (Dutch allows for word-chaining), chessboard poetry, anagrams, lengthy pieces of prose containing no vowel other than the e, or containing no "tall" letters as on a typewriter (e.g. oeain but not j or b), and so forth.
In 2002, a sequel Opperlans! [sic] Taal- & letterkunde appeared. Because the chapters in this new version were even more mystifying, another book, Opperlans woordenboek, was released in 2007 to let readers identify the actual question. It is in fact a list of Upperlandic words with references to the big book – and a number of new words.
In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language consists of words whose letters are taken from an alphabet and are well-formed according to a specific set of rules called a formal grammar.
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.
Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern.
Javanese is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the Javanese people from the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, Indonesia. There are also pockets of Javanese speakers on the northern coast of western Java. It is the native language of more than 68 million people.
German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the case.
IJ is a digraph of the letters i and j. Occurring in the Dutch language, it is sometimes considered a ligature, or a letter in itself. In most fonts that have a separate character for ij, the two composing parts are not connected but are separate glyphs, which are sometimes slightly kerned.
The Javanese script is one of Indonesia's traditional scripts developed on the island of Java. The script is primarily used to write the Javanese language, but in the course of its development has also been used to write several other regional languages such as Sundanese, Madurese, and Sasak; the lingua franca of the region, Malay; as well as the historical languages Kawi and Sanskrit. Javanese script was actively used by the Javanese people for writing day-to-day and literary texts from at least the mid-15th century CE until the mid-20th century CE, before its function was gradually supplanted by the Latin alphabet. Today the script is taught in DI Yogyakarta, Central Java, and the East Java Province as part of the local curriculum, but with very limited function in everyday use.
"Hebban olla vogala", sometimes spelled "hebban olla uogala", are the first three words of an 11th-century text fragment written in Old Dutch. The fragment was discovered in 1932 on the back of the end-leaf of a manuscript that once belonged to the cathedral priory of Rochester, Kent, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 340. The manuscript contains a collection of Old English sermons by Ælfric of Eynsham. The Dutch text is found on fol. 169v and probably dates to the late 11th century. It was long considered to represent a West Flemish variant of Old Low Franconian, although more recent research shows that it also displays significant influence from Old English.
Chapter and verse divisions did not appear in the original texts of Jewish or Christian bibles; such divisions form part of the paratext of the Bible. Since the early 13th century, most copies and editions of the Bible have presented all but the shortest of the scriptural books with divisions into chapters, generally a page or so in length. Since the mid-16th century, editors have further subdivided each chapter into verses – each consisting of a few short lines or of one or more sentences. In the King James Version (KJV) Esther 8:9 is the longest verse and John 11:35 is the shortest. Sometimes a sentence spans more than one verse, as in the case of Ephesians 2:8–9, and sometimes there is more than one sentence in a single verse, as in the case of Genesis 1:2.
A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition. Some specific definitions of the term "word" are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others suggest that the concept is simply a convention used in everyday situations.
The longest word in any given language depends on the word formation rules of each specific language, and on the types of words allowed for consideration.
Dutch orthography uses the Latin alphabet. The spelling system is issued by government decree and is compulsory for all government documentation and educational establishments.
A word square is a type of acrostic. It consists of a set of words written out in a square grid, such that the same words can be read both horizontally and vertically. The number of words, which is equal to the number of letters in each word, is known as the "order" of the square. For example, this is an order 5 square:
Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components and elements of a book into a coherent unit. In the words of renowned typographer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974), book design, "though largely forgotten today, [relies upon] methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve, [and which] have been developed over centuries. To produce perfect books, these rules have to be brought back to life and applied". Richard Hendel describes book design as "an arcane subject", and refers to the need for a context to understand what that means.
Hugo Brandt Corstius was a Dutch author, known for his achievements in both literature and science.
In linguistics, Old Dutch or Old Low Franconian is the set of dialects that evolved from Frankish spoken in the Low Countries during the Early Middle Ages, from around the 6th or 9th to the 12th century. Old Dutch is mostly recorded on fragmentary relics, and words have been reconstructed from Middle Dutch and Old Dutch loanwords in French.
Letter frequency is the number of times letters of the alphabet appear on average in written language. Letter frequency analysis dates back to the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi, who formally developed the method to break ciphers. Letter frequency analysis gained importance in Europe with the development of movable type in 1450 AD, where one must estimate the amount of type required for each letterform. Linguists use letter frequency analysis as a rudimentary technique for language identification, where it is particularly effective as an indication of whether an unknown writing system is alphabetic, syllabic, or ideographic.
The Rheinische Dokumenta is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland. It was presented to the public in 1986 by the Landschaftsverband Rheinland.
The history of Dutch orthography covers the changes in spelling of Dutch both in the Netherlands itself and in the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in Belgium. Up until the 18th century there was no standardization of grammar or spelling. The Latin alphabet had been used from the beginning and it was not easy to make a distinction between long and short vowels (a / aa). The word jaar (year) for instance, could be spelt jar,jaer,jair, or even yaer and iaer. With the spirit of the French Revolution, attempts were made to unify Dutch spelling and grammar. Matthijs Siegenbeek, professor at Leiden was officially asked in 1801 to draw up a uniform spelling.
Eunoia (2001) is an anthology of univocalics by Canadian poet Christian Bök. Each chapter is written using words limited to consonants and a single vowel, producing sentences like: "Hassan can, at a handclap, call a vassal at hand and ask that all staff plan a bacchanal". The author believes "his book proves that each vowel has its own personality, and demonstrates the flexibility of the English language." The work was inspired by the Oulipo group, which seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques.
The complete Dutch text of the book appears in Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (Digital Library of Dutch Literature). Retrieved 29 May 2018.
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