Xref: utzoo soc.culture.nordic:1626 comp.std.internat:565 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!cornell!stefan From: stefan@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Kjartan Stefansson) Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic,comp.std.internat Subject: Re: ASCII for national characters Message-ID: <34613@cornell.UUCP> Date: 27 Nov 89 14:07:15 GMT References: <472@enea.se> <1353@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <2360@draken.nada.kth.se> <1373@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <1383@krafla.rhi.hi.is> Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP Reply-To: stefan@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Kjartan Stefansson) Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY Lines: 24 In article matsc@sics.se (Mats Carlsson) writes: >In article <1383@krafla.rhi.hi.is> magnus@rhi.hi.is (Magnus Gislason) writes: > You should know that the Icelandic alphabet does not include C, Q, W and Z, > and thus only contains 32 characters. :-) > >Really? Wasn't it quite recently that a spelling reform said words >like "yzt" should be spelled with an s instead of a z, reverting an >earlier law which banned writing s instead of z? Yes, this is correct. 'z' used to be perfectly valid Icelandic letter. But it is pronounced as 's' in modern Icelandic. The only way to distinguish between 's' and 'z' in spelling, was to know the root of the word. Few years ago, a spelling reform was made, to replace the 'z' by a 's'. > Didn't Halldor >Laxness even spend some time in prison for this "crime"? Halldor Laxness has been known for his style of spelling, which in general is closer to the spoken language than the official spelling. In his early work he was criticized a lot for this, but I don't believe he was ever imprisoned for it! Kjartan.