Onaantastbaar Engels. De Houding Tegenover Vernederlandste Spelling Van Engelse en Franse Leenwoorden

The official rules for the orthography prescribe dutchified forms for some loanwords and source language orthographies for others. Experts feel that this deficiency of the spelling system is the most obvious candidate for a forth-coming revision. In this paper we examine a source of variation in orthographies that has received relatively little attention: differences in status of the cultures the source language are associated with. The results of a series of parallel experi-ments are discussed, in which Dutch youngsters gave their opinions about dutchified English and French loanwords. The subjects disliked the adaptation of English words significantly more than the adaptation of French words. We explain this result by assuming a correlation between the high status which the Anglo-American culture has for Dutch adolescents, and a perceived inviola-bility of the words borrowed from the English language.