cga2000 wrote:
On Mon, Jul 24, 2006 at 08:37:47AM EDT, A.J.Mechelynck wrote:
Warning: off-topic post. Read at your own risk.
[...]
On a mechanical typewriter, it was possible to use "half-spacing" by
holding the space bar down. So, if one wanted to produce the oe digraph
on a French typewriter (not an electric one though), it was possible --
for a perfectionist. Let's say I wanted to type "boeuf" (= beef/ox):
1. press and hold spacebar. This advances the carriage by one half space
2. hit b. This prints b without moving the carriage.
3. release, press and hold spacebar.
4. hit o
5. release spacebar. The carriage is now over the right half of the o.
6. hit e u f in succession.
.. makes my mouth water.. I should try Ebay .. see if I can find an
affordable high-end typewriter that does such fancy stuff.
You might have to buy an antique: only mechanical (not electrical)
typewriters behaved this way.
[...]
.. somewhat to my surprise the Belgian keyboard uses the AZERTY layout
while the Netherlands use QWERTY. But then this would make sense since
as far as I recall Dutch/Flemish is pretty limited to the ASCII charset
and that's obviously available on AZERTY keyboards. So they only needed
to accomodate the French-speaking community. But doesn't Belgium also
have a German-speaking community? Ah.. maybe it was just that most
businesses were owned by French-speaking Belgians at the time the layout
was adopted..
German, or German together with French, is spoken in parts of three
"cantons" (i.e., in part of the territory of three Justices of the
Peace), near the German border. The Brussels area is bilingual
French/Dutch; a number of municipalities near the French/Dutch language
border have, at least in theory, a "protected minority" of the opposite
linguistic persuasion. Said border runs approximately East-West from
somewhere between Dunkirk and Lille to the vicinity of Maastricht where
it hits the German language area.
In the 19th century, the Belgian high classes (nobility, liberal
professions, rich merchants, etc.) spoke French as their mother language
all over the country. In 1830 (15 years after the merger) the Catholic
Belgians revolted against the Calvinist Dutch, then (after rejecting
several other candidates) accepted as king Leopold of Saxony-Coburg, a
Protestant who was the uncle of Queen Victoria, and married to a
daughter of "Louis-Philippe Premier, roi des Français" (or did he marry
her for the occasion?). Louis-Philippe's dynasty was ended for good
after only 18 years but Leopold's has endured (with some ups and downs)
to this day. The Flemish nationalistic movement was not necessarily
created, but at least sponsored by the Germans during both world wars as
a possible use of the "Divide et impera" maxim. The Dutch language has
gained equality with French over the Kingdom in general and a
quasi-monopole north of the language border, but there is still a strong
feeling of resentment against the "French-speaking oppressor" among part
of the Flemish. The far-right racist and nationalistic "Vlaams Belang"
(formerly "Vlaams Blok") party has, IIRC, some 20% of the votes in the
harbour city of Antwerp... especially in rich boroughs where hardly any
Muslim, Jew or French-speaker have ever been sighted... But I digress.
keyboards have a dead key for circumflex and trema/diaeresis/umlaut,
but à ç é è ù and sometimes uppercase-C-cedilla each have their own
glyphs. (In French, uppercase letters with the exception of C-cedilla
and sometimes E-acute were usually left unaccented. I believe
computers are slowly pushing back the trend.)
Actually I found that there is such a thing as a US International
Keyboard and maybe I could acquire one of those since it all the fancy
characters that I would want..
Oh, golly! Good to know. Hope you won't get stuck with a keyboard that
your OS doesn't recognise.
Best regards, Tony.
Thanks much for all this pre-computer days lore..!
Doesn't hurt to know a little something about where we came from..
Thanks
cga
My pleasure.
Best regards,
Tony.
