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| | An Englishman's Difficulties with the Dutch |
 | | The Dutch, on the other hand regularly have a spring-cleaning session in their spelling to further confuse foreigners in their attempts to learn Dutch, failing in the process to make the spelling consistent, and having the effect of losing continuity. |
 | | Unfortunately, a basic premise for the Dutch is that Dutch spelling mustn't look German, and for the Belgians that it mustn't look French, so that there are clashes over some issues, such as the use of c or k for the k sound. |
 | | In fact, originally, the spelling of a long i was ii, although you also have to know that at that time, there was no separate letter j, and the j shape was just a stylistic variant of the letter i. |
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