As long the debate will be only limited to the discussion about writing 'C(c)hrist' with a capital letter or not, we don't have to worry yet. Indeed, I can only conclude that the Dutch Language Union is busy with the veiled introduction of 'positive discrimination' in the language by minorising the impact of Christ by writing his name in miniscule caracters, whereas the Azteke are able to write their names in capital letters. But more scandalous is the fact that 'Muhammed' will be remained to be written in capital letters. This has a very simple reason: On the television, somebody of the Dutch Language Union has explained that 'christ' (=the statue) will be written in miniscul caracters, because the statue of 'Buddha' (= a buddha) will be also written in miniscul letters. But this is not the case for 'Mohammed'. The reason? It is in islamic culture strictly forbidden to figure anybody related to the islam!! That's the reason why there are no statues of Muhammed, and because they don't exist, there will be never a need to write them in miniscul characters. And so 'Muhammed' will be written at any time in capital letters. So, in fact we can conclude that the supremacy of islamic culture is slightly squeezing into our Western culture, even in our own language. Isn't that a dangerous fact?

But more dangerous are the planned discussions not only in the spelling rules, but in the debate about the general update of the Dutch vocabulary list. From leftist corners, whe hear nowadays a plea to remove the word 'allochtoon' (= allochthone)from the Dutch wordlist; because it has a too negative connotation which would make life for our coloured neigbours in country more hard. But the word 'allochtoon' is in fact clearly enough definited by the dictionnary of 'Van Dale'. By the opinion of Van Dale, 'allochtoon' means: "iem. die van elders afkomstig is" (= somebody whose origin is elsewhere). This means that a tourist, an inhabitant or a worker in a country A who isn't born in that country, is an allochtone. But the meaning of the word is also very polyinterpretable: If an inhabitant of Mortsel would move to Antwerp, he's also an allochtone in the eyes of the native inhabitants of Antwerp. This is of course a very extreme example, because Mortsel and Antwerp are two communities that border eachother (Mortsel in the South, Antwerp in the North); but on the other hand we could also give the example that if there would be life on Mars, and a green tiny mortal would land on our planet, whe could also say that he or she (or whatever ;-)) is an allochtone, because he/she/it doesn't live on planet Earth. What I wanted to prove, is that the word 'allochthone' isn't an invective to discriminate other people, as the leftist organisations would like to believe us; but just a word whit a very logical meaning. So it would be a shame if the word would be submitted from our daily vocabulary list.

Luc,

your analysis about 'christus' is not correct. It's only when you use 'christus' as a statue of Christ, that it's written with a lowercase letter. In the name 'Christus', like any proper name, capitalization is retained. The same is true for e.g. 'croesus' (a wealthy man) and 'Croesus' (the ancient king in Asia Minor).

What is the penalty for the incorrect use of capital letters? Loss of one's writer's licence (or "license" for Molly)(or "lisense" for people who just can't spell)?

Is it "Three Strikes And You're Out"?

Bet e. e. cummings is turning in his grave. He'd have got "life" at the very least.

bOB dONEY