A linguistics question. Why is it that, in the Dutch language, if a word begins with the common letter combination of "ij", both the I and the J are capitalised? I noticed this particularly is the word "IJsland", meaning "Iceland".

peasypod

IJ (together) is a member of the Dutch alphabet between the letters x and z. "IJ is most often written with an I and J letter as a ligature 'IJ'. As a ligature, it is nearly always counted as a single letter, and therefore is always capitalized as one whole when needed: ijs (ice) is written IJs at the start of a sentence, and not Ijs. Note however that in some southern (Flemish) dialects the IJ is used as a digraph and counted as two letters, and the capitalization rule is therefore not followed. In the southern Netherlands the capitalization rule is followed, though it is usually counted as a digraph." http://www.answers.com/topic/dutch-alphabet Aug 06 06, 6:10 AM