musicbutton

 




 

SITE INFO
 
 SITE INDEX

About the Order of Time

About the contributor

About the spelling

About downloading from the Order of Time

About contributing / add URL/e-mail

About the logo of the Order of Time

About putting images of this site on your homepage

About Linking to the Order of Time: link-texts

Synopsis: the Order of Time summarized in six dialogues

 

_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.