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From: jcf@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman)
Subject: Re: Capitalization of improper nouns in earlier English
Message-ID: <E5tM8t.BGy@world.std.com>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
References: <19970217223600.RAA10193@ladder01.news.aol.com> <3309f262.29768594@news.mindspring.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 22:53:17 GMT
Lines: 21

dgary@mindspring.com (D Gary Grady) writes:

>A more or less related question is how modern German got into the
>habit of capitalizing all nouns, and what other languages with case
>distinctions do. I suspect that most more or less resemble French in
>capitalizing proper nouns only, and not adjectives derived from those
>nouns, as modern English does.

I don't know how the German convention got started, but my
understanding is that among the European languages only Swedish has
imitated German in that respect.  As to proper adjectives, German
capitalizes them, but as far as I know, none of the Romance languages
do.  Nor does Russian.

The Romance languages & Russian are also somewhat narrower than
English is in what counts as a proper noun -- e.g., the days of the
week & the months of the year are l.c.

---  Joe Fineman    jcf@world.std.com

||:  Be sweet, and you'll be eaten.  :||
