Unusual capitalisations

[vec]

I find French capitalization of nationalities strange too, capitalizing nouns but not adjectives. Il est canadien (he's Canadian), c'est une chose canadienne (it's a Canadian thing), BUT elle n'avait vu aucun Canadien (she'd never seen a Canadian).

The same is true of most languages: Spanish, Italian, German, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian etc. etc. Only proper nouns are capitalised, adjectives are never capitalised.

[Qwynegold]

I find French capitalization of nationalities strange too, capitalizing nouns but not adjectives. Il est canadien (he's Canadian), c'est une chose canadienne (it's a Canadian thing), BUT elle n'avait vu aucun Canadien (she'd never seen a Canadian).

The same is true of most languages: Spanish, Italian, German, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian etc. etc. Only proper nouns are capitalised, adjectives are never capitalised.

To clarify, unlike in the French example, in Swedish we don't capitalize the noun that stands for a person of that nationality. Using the examples above:
Han är kanadensisk - He's Canadian
Det är en kanadensisk grej - It's a Canadian thing
Hon har aldrig sett en kanadensare förut - She's never seen a Canadian before

[finlay]

Also, English Capitalization of Any So-Called 'Content Words' in Titles. Not even German does that and it's kind of slightly annoying to see it done by English speakers for foreign titles.

This has caused me problems. What do you capitalise in titles? It's rarely consistent.

Matilda, Who told lies, and was Burned to Death has one main verb told in lower case, with Burned capitalised. Lies is a noun, but uncapitalised.
Jim, Who ran away from his Nurse, and was eaten by a Lion is more straightforward, but somehow does not look right to me.
The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches has all content words capitalized, which I think looks right.

It has always bothered me (in a pedantic way, not an anti-Christian one) when He and Him are capitalised. I understand capitalising God, as that is a proper noun, but extending it to pronouns is just awful. I fully understand the significance of it, but it is inconsistent; thy in Hallowed be thy name is seldom capitalised despite having the same referent.

I like to catelogue films that I watch with the correct capitalisation, and I can say that the only 'right' one there is the third one. I'm not sure how much it matches up with other places' capitalisation strategies, and I normally copy off IMDB if in doubt, but I take it as any word that is not an article, conjunction or preposition 4 letters or under should be capitalised. Hence, pronouns and all verbs are capitalised. But I think IMDB does only prepositions three letters and under, because I would not capitalise 'upon' or 'into' where they would, and I think I tend to distinguish between prepositions used as prepositions and prepositions as part of a phrasal verb. Also, the first and last words shouldn't be de-capitalised.

With other languages, this is thrown out the window, basically, in favour of the sentence-style capitalisation.

Also, I have a script for iTunes to do it for music, and it has a finite list of words which shouldn't be capitalised. It's not actually that long.

[Ser]

It has always bothered me (in a pedantic way, not an anti-Christian one) when He and Him are capitalised. I understand capitalising God, as that is a proper noun, but extending it to pronouns is just awful. I fully understand the significance of it, but it is inconsistent; thy in Hallowed be thy name is seldom capitalised despite having the same referent.

In Spanish only the nominative and prepositional forms are capitalized in fact, getting examples like le quiero hablar a Él, where both le and Él refer to God.

I find French capitalization of nationalities strange too, capitalizing nouns but not adjectives. Il est canadien (he's Canadian), c'est une chose canadienne (it's a Canadian thing), BUT elle n'avait vu aucun Canadien (she'd never seen a Canadian).

The same is true of most languages: Spanish, Italian, German, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian etc. etc. Only proper nouns are capitalised, adjectives are never capitalised.

Not Spanish either (if it did maybe I wouldn't've found it weird).

[vec]

Sorry, I didn't read the portion I quoted through. French and English are weird in this regard, then, it seems. What I meant to say was that most languages have a rule prohibiting the capitalisation of adjectives in general.

[Jipí]

For some reason I sometimes accidentally capitalized adjectives in primary school. And I still mess up my capitalization when taking class notes sometimes.

[Jetboy]

As I learned it, the rule for capitalizing titles is the first word, content words, and non-content words longer than four letters (or maybe at least 4) are capitalized, along with normal rules for proper nouns etc..

EDIT: Oh, wait, it seems there's a second page on which finlay beat me to the punch. Ah, well. Corroboration?

[linguofreak]

It has always bothered me (in a pedantic way, not an anti-Christian one) when He and Him are capitalised. I understand capitalising God, as that is a proper noun, but extending it to pronouns is just awful. I fully understand the significance of it, but it is inconsistent; thy in Hallowed be thy name is seldom capitalised despite having the same referent.

Well, it is somewhat of an idiosyncracy of individual Christians. Neither of the translations I'm most familiar with do it (NIV and NLT), nor does the KJV. So there's no well-prescribed usage for it, and I'm pretty sure I've used both "he" and "He", so it's not even consistent on a personal level for just that one word. As for "thou", "thy" being non-capitalized, first of all, they are generally used in quoting scripture, where they are likely to use the same capitalization as the scripture version being used (generally KJV), in liturgy, which may well have been written before capitalizing "he" referring to God became common practice, or in prayer, which is generally spoken rather than written (also, on a technicality, nowadays prayer is much more likely to use "you" and "your" rather than "thou" and "thy". I'd almost say I have on occasion seen "You" and "Your", but I can't think of any specific instances). "He" and "his", on the other hand, are, as they are 3rd person pronouns rather than 2nd, more often used in writing outside of a scriptural/liturgical context, and thus more likely to be capitalized by people who capitalize pronouns referring to God.

[TomHChappell]

Also, English Capitalization of Any So-Called 'Content Words' in Titles. Not even German does that and it's kind of slightly annoying to see it done by English speakers for foreign titles.

In a German book whose title contains the words "Nordamerikanische Bürgerkrieg", "Vereinigen Nordstaaten", and "Sonderbund Südstaaten", aren't all six of those words capitalized? (Probably some are spelled differently; my German's not necessarily adequate to the task.)

Of course a different book's title on the same subject might use the words "Konföderierten", "Union", "Sezessionskrieg", instead of some of the words above.

[finlay]

German capitalises all nouns, in or out of titles. Those are (compound) nouns. In English, there is a closed set of only about 30-40 words that don't get capitalised in titles.

[TomHChappell]

German capitalises all nouns, in or out of titles. Those are (compound) nouns. In English, there is a closed set of only about 30-40 words that don't get capitalised in titles.

Isn't Nordamerikanische an adjective, not a noun?
Vereint is an adjective, right? Verein or Vereinigung are nouns, right?
Isn't Sonderbund an adjective, not a noun?
I could be wrong about any two of those; I don't think I'm wrong about all three.

I could haved misremembered the exact words.
It was something like "Der Nordamerikanische Bürgerkrieg zwischen der Bundesvereinigung der Nordstaaten gegen die Konföderation der Südstaaten." All the capitalized words there are nouns except "Nordamerikanische".

But I think it was more like "Der Nordamerikanische Bürgerkrieg zwischen der Vereinigten Nordstaaten gegen die Sonderbund Südstaaten." Vereinigten is an adjective. Whatever word is related to "Sonderbund" that I can't remember exactly, also seemed to me to be an adjective.

[Jipí]

Set phrases capitalize all parts sometimes. Thus books can be named e.g. Der Nordamerikanische Bürgerkrieg with all three words capitalized (not just the first word and nouns), if the author wants nordamerikanischer Bürgerkrieg to be understood as a name, which it is in this case, since it refers to the one event known as "American Civil War", not just any civil war in North America. This is an exception, though. Normally, titles use sentence capitalization in German, so those parts that aren't commonly capitalized aren't capitalized in titles either. Books in German with multi-word titles that I've got on my shelf include (with their translation into English in square brackets, regardless of their actual English title):

• Die deutsche Rechtschreibung
  [German Orthography]
  
  Kleines Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch ← "Mittelhochdeutsch" is an adjective, but it's capitalized exceptionally here.
  [Small Middle High German Dictionary]
  
  Einführung in die moderne Literaturwissenschaft
  [Introduction to Modern Literary Studies]
  
  Arbeitstechniken des literaturwissenschaftlichen Studiums
  [Working Techniques in the Study of Literary Studies]
  
  Aspekte erzählender Prosa
  [Aspects of Narrative Prose]
  
  Eine kurze Geschichte der Sprachen
  [A Short History of Languages]
  
  Der Besuch der alten Dame
  [The Visit of the Old Lady]
  
  Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher ← "Träumend" is a participle used as a determiner, but Stadt der Träumenden Bücher is an epitheton for Buchhaim/Bookholm, thus a set phrase.
  [The City of Dreaming Books]
  
  Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre
  [The Criminal out of Lost Honour]

[richard1631978]

There aren't that many English acronyms I've noticed with a small letter (the scientific dB & pH come to mind), but some languages seem to use them a more, for example the German GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) & Gaelic TnaG.

Addresses normally start with a capital for each element, in my job I have to keep customer records up to date & normally stick to this rule.

I've never been sure how to capitalise Welsh place names with a single, y & occasional dashes, should I write them as: Betws-Y-Coed, Betws-y-Coed, Betws Y Coed or Betws y Coed?

[linguoboy]

I've never been sure how to capitalise Welsh place names with a single, y & occasional dashes, should I write them as: Betws-Y-Coed, Betws-y-Coed, Betws Y Coed or Betws y Coed?

"Betws-y-Coed". That's what all the most authoritative sites have.

You're right that actual usage is damn inconsistent. The official site for Melin-y-Coed has that spelling, though it lists the variants "Melinycoed" and "Melin y Coed" on the homepage, and Wikipedia also has "Melin-y-coed". Versions with capital "y" always look to me like ignorant anglicisms.

[TomHChappell]

Set phrases capitalize all parts sometimes. Thus books can be named e.g. Der Nordamerikanische Bürgerkrieg with all three words capitalized (not just the first word and nouns), if the author wants nordamerikanischer Bürgerkrieg to be understood as a name, which it is in this case, since it refers to the one event known as "American Civil War", not just any civil war in North America. This is an exception, though. Normally, titles use sentence capitalization in German, so those parts that aren't commonly capitalized aren't capitalized in titles either. Books in German with multi-word titles that I've got on my shelf include (with their translation into English in square brackets, regardless of their actual English title):

• Die deutsche Rechtschreibung
  [German Orthography]
  
  Kleines Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch ← "Mittelhochdeutsch" is an adjective, but it's capitalized exceptionally here.
  [Small Middle High German Dictionary]
  
  Einführung in die moderne Literaturwissenschaft
  [Introduction to Modern Literary Studies]
  
  Arbeitstechniken des literaturwissenschaftlichen Studiums
  [Working Techniques in the Study of Literary Studies]
  
  Aspekte erzählender Prosa
  [Aspects of Narrative Prose]
  
  Eine kurze Geschichte der Sprachen
  [A Short History of Languages]
  
  Der Besuch der alten Dame
  [The Visit of the Old Lady]
  
  Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher ← "Träumend" is a participle used as a determiner, but Stadt der Träumenden Bücher is an epitheton for Buchhaim/Bookholm, thus a set phrase.
  [The City of Dreaming Books]
  
  Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre
  [The Criminal out of Lost Honour]

Thanks.

[Acid Badger]

You often don't do capitalization on the internet in casual contexts, people get it wrong all the time in real life, and separated compounds can be seen everywhere today, not only the internet. It may be noted that this is essentially how German was written in the early modern period, so what goes around comes around

I just hate it when people do that, and that Binnen-I-crap as well. Especially when it ends up like this.

[Travis B.]

You often don't do capitalization on the internet in casual contexts, people get it wrong all the time in real life, and separated compounds can be seen everywhere today, not only the internet. It may be noted that this is essentially how German was written in the early modern period, so what goes around comes around

I just hate it when people do that, and that Binnen-I-crap as well. Especially when it ends up like this.

What....

[Aszev]

You often don't do capitalization on the internet in casual contexts, people get it wrong all the time in real life, and separated compounds can be seen everywhere today, not only the internet. It may be noted that this is essentially how German was written in the early modern period, so what goes around comes around

I just hate it when people do that, and that Binnen-I-crap as well. Especially when it ends up like this.

What....

I'm guessing he's referring to the Englishy <'s> part, which is apparently correct in modern German :\

[Acid Badger]

You often don't do capitalization on the internet in casual contexts, people get it wrong all the time in real life, and separated compounds can be seen everywhere today, not only the internet. It may be noted that this is essentially how German was written in the early modern period, so what goes around comes around

I just hate it when people do that, and that Binnen-I-crap as well. Especially when it ends up like this.

What....

I'm guessing he's referring to the Englishy <'s> part, which is apparently correct in modern German :\

The whole thing is just... wrong. Its supposed to be Bahnhofsmarkt, not Bahnhof´s Markt.

[Jipí]

Actually I meant something like Bahnhofs Markt (except when there was no general capitalization of nouns, that'd rather have been bahnhofs markt, of course), but yeah, certain people feel a need to replace every instance of final -s with -'s, which may then spread to other final letters/plural markers as well – anyone up for a plate of Nudel´n mit Tomaten Sosse? This is just plain wrong because there's nothing left out there and we don't do English-style -'s genitives in German Another typographic nuissance addressed in Fanu's post is the misuse of the ´ accent key for ’. It looks just plain ugly and you're supposed to use ' when ’ isn't available. But people somehow don't get that ´ and ' are distinct keys with different purposes. And, of course, as we all know, the letter ß has been discarded in the 1997 orthgraphy reform and manufacturing of ß keys has been discontinued

As for the Binnen-I crap, the local AStA (student organization) is a fan of the underscore for genderization: Student_innen (~student_esses), when it's not Studierende (studying people) anyway. What's even more stupid than overly explicit genderization of occupational nouns is when people read over the masucline form and all unmarked (masculine) forms become marked (feminine), so everyone becomes a woman, regardless of their sex/gender-affliliation And I've heard men do that, it's not a strictly feminist/LGBT-activist thing. Women mostly don't seem to have issues with being included in the unmarked/masculine form, though, and often report to perceive the inclusion of the feminine form unnecessary and ridiculously long-winded. What's also kind of interesting and quoted a lot by those opposing overly explicit genderization is that you don't usually see DiebIn (thief), MörderIn (murderer) etc., which would mean that women just don't commit crimes ›:] I suppose those who feel really revolutionary and enlightened ought to just drop gender, both grammatical and natural, as a category of inflection entirely. It would look like castration, but finally we'd have engineered our language to be free of sexual oppression!~~ </rant>

[Travis B.]

Typically we in English usually just use the male form as the unmarked form (whereas the female form when there is one is usually derived from it), and apply that to women as well in present-day usage, so we don't have to worry about all this stuff... (There are the exception of widow and widower, which cannot be used this way, but almost all other such words work this way.)

[linguoboy]

Typically we in English usually just use the male form as the unmarked form (whereas the female form when there is one is usually derived from it), and apply that to women as well in present-day usage, so we don't have to worry about all this stuff... (There are the exception of widow and widower, which cannot be used this way, but almost all other such words work this way.)

There are a few cases, though, where the masculine form was apparently felt too gendered to be used as an epicene form. I'm thinking of "waiter", for instance, which unlike "actor" never gets used for female wait staff. I either hear the slightly odd neologisim "waitron" (which naturally makes me think of tuxedoes robots from some 1950s World of Tomorrow! cartoon short) or the much less odd "server".

[Shrdlu]

And in Sweden (who naturally have to be worse then anyone else, in any category) the feminist movement is almost militant, if it isn't already.

[linguofreak]

You often don't do capitalization on the internet in casual contexts, people get it wrong all the time in real life, and separated compounds can be seen everywhere today, not only the internet. It may be noted that this is essentially how German was written in the early modern period, so what goes around comes around

I just hate it when people do that, and that Binnen-I-crap as well. Especially when it ends up like this.

What....

I'm guessing he's referring to the Englishy <'s> part, which is apparently correct in modern German :\

The whole thing is just... wrong. Its supposed to be Bahnhofsmarkt, not Bahnhof´s Markt.

And the thing is, if they're actively trying to Anglicize it, it's not a good Anglicization, 'cause an English speaker probably wouldn't use a possessive there. If I wanted to make that look English, I'd say "Bahnhof Markt" or "Markt beim Bahnhof", along the lines of English phrases like "airport shop" or "store at the train station".

[MisterBernie]

I just hate it when people do that, and that Binnen-I-crap as well. Especially when it ends up like this.

I've grown used to the genitive-s-with-apostrophe thing in German, but separating compounds and using an apostrophe for the Fugen-S :/ ? Why would you do that ;-; ? That's like people who mark epenthesis in their glosses.

And I've heard men do that, it's not a strictly feminist/LGBT-activist thing.

Men can be feminists, too, you know.