History of Dutch orthography has, in return, been accused of being even more inconsistent than "Het Groene Boekje". In Flanders, the white spelling is not used by any large media. History of Dutch orthography The history of Dutch orthography covers the changes in spelling of Dutch both in the Netherlands itself and in the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in Belgium. The Dutch spoken between 1150 and 1500 is referred to as Middle Dutch. During this period there was no standardization of grammar. Authors generally wrote in their own dialects. Very often it is possible to tell from the language whether a text comes from
The Sorrow of Belgium only one who could handle such a subject and he did it." Suzanne Ruta in "The New York Times Book Review": "Mr. Claus' wonderful novel is a chronicle of war in a small corner of one small country and a painstaking portrait of the artist as an obnoxious young man. The Sorrow of Belgium The Sorrow of Belgium () is a major novel first published in 1983 by the Belgian author Hugo Claus (1929–2008). It is widely considered Claus' major work and "the most important Dutch-language novel of the twentieth century". "The Sorrow of Belgium" explores the childhood and youth