[arp242]

I think this is a bit of a generational thing, with older people considering ij a letter, and younger don't, "younger" being under 40/50 or so. I'm approaching 40 and I was never taught to see ij as a letter, and always considered it to be the same as eu, ou, ei, and so forth: two letters that make a single sound (digraph).

The y doesn't occur in Dutch words, only in loanwords, and while loanwords with a y are relatively common now, I suppose most are also fairly new (as in: last 100 years or so), which would explain the generational difference.

I also think it's fine to just capitalize the I: Ijsland instead of IJsland. I suspect this will be the norm 50 years from now.

[crote]

The funny part is that 'y' used to be quite common in Middle Dutch as a variant of 'ij' or 'i'. This resulted in words like 'anys' (now 'anijs'), 'Leyden' (now 'Leiden'), 'ghelyc' (now 'gelijk'), and 'waerheyt' (now 'waarheid'). It was simply an alternative spelling. This was officially abolished with a spelling reform in 1863, with it only being allowed in loan words.

> I also think it's fine to just capitalize the I: Ijsland instead of IJsland. I suspect this will be the norm 50 years from now.

Nope, this just looks wrong to me and the spelling rules do not allow it. It is written as a single letter, so it should be capitalized as a single letter.

[airza]

Dutch is not my first language but I play wordfeud in it sometimes; I was surprised to eventually infer that the Y was not used in any native words but still available in the bag. It's been a real challenge to use it to play the ~4 loan words I know that use it.