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What rules for capitalisation do you have in your conlang(s)? (This may be relevant is regularly written in the Latin alphabet, if it has an official Romanisation, or is written in some alphabet that distinguishes upper- and lower-case letters in a way similar to the Latin alphabet.)

Among European languages, rules for capitalisation differ greatly. English, for example, capitalises words far more often than Swedish.

Examples of words that may be capitalised in some languages, but not in others:

-All nouns
-Demonyms and nouns of nationality (a Canadian)
-Adjectives of nationality (a Canadian newspaper)
-Weekdays (Monday, Tuesday)
-Months (January, February)
-Holidays (Christmas, Easter)
-Names of religions (Christianity, Islam)
-Names of languages (German, French, Samoan)
-Words describing deities (Creator, Heavenly Father)

In a conlang, one could always think of a bunch of other circumstances where one would capitalise, whether or not it's attested in "natural" orthographies:

-All words referring to animate beings.
-All words referring to humans or rational beings.
-All words in a certain inflectional form (like nouns in the nominative, or verbs in the infinitive, or all singular nouns, or all plural nouns).

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constructedlanguages.net

Niùvarā capitalizes only the first word of sentence and names.

Because capitalization is a feature of alphabets and I rarely create true alphabets for my conlangs I have never concerned myself with rules regarding capitalization. It's a very European concept that the majority of the world never cared about until colonization became rampant.

I wonder if any languages with Hebrew/Arab-style final letters have rules for when to use them except just "at the end of words", like, say, final letters are not used with names or verbs or whatever.

Well, that would be a form change, but not necessarily a case change. The difference between majuscules and minuscules is quite a different thing than the difference between medial and final tsadi or the use of ta marbuta.

Yes, but close enough - and if the use of the final forms obeyed more complex rules, it'd be closer to an actual capitalization in function. Why should capitals have to be Word-, MorphEme-initial or throughout the WORD?

If you mean that the letters change to indicate some semantic or grammatical function, then yes, they are quite similar.


Well, that depends on the language as well as the script being used, doesn't it.


Again, depends on which specific language we're talking about. German is a good example of how capitals are used quite differently than a related language like English.


Well, because that's the generally accepted definition and use of the term?

Orthographical change like the ta marbuta has more to do with pronunciation and grammar than does the use of capitals to denote places and people which could be considered more like an honorific usage, which is not necessarily always a grammatical issue.

Is camelCase a kind of capitalization in your use of the term?

Yes, but camelCase is used with the Latin alphabet and is a very recent phenomenon. Again, this is a case of majuscules and minuscules, not a variation on form for pronunciation or grammatical function.

All my capitalization strategies are ripped off o English. The only excpetion is Laapk, where the genitive and construct state clitics are not capitalized. The beginning of the root does get capitalized, though.

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It's true that capitalisation need not be relevant for all languages. But many of the conlangs I have seen are either written in the Latin alphabet, or have some form of Romanisation.

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constructedlanguages.net

Final letters in Hebrew have nothing to do with pronunciation or grammatical function. Get that? Nor in Arabic. It's entirely triggered by *position in word*, which btw is an important part in determining where capitalization goes in the Latin alphabet. E.g. in Latin, word-initial + sentence-initial OR word-initial + the word is in some class (proper nouns, ...). In Hebrew, "word-final" is the trigger. Not grammar. NOT GRAMMAR.

And I suggested this when?


Well, I guess you and I see grammatical function as two very different things.


Again, I never said this for Hebrew.

You obviously have a much broader definition of what constitutes capitalization than I and I see no reason to debate your definition with you but I am under the impression that your definition is a minority one based on some of the things I have read. No big deal. Cheers.

Wateu capitalises names of languages (Wateu, a particular language, vs the generic term for language, wateu).

Wateu does not capitalise weekdays or months. I am not sure about holidays like Christmas.

Though names of nation states are capitalised, adjectives and demonyms derived from those are not capitalised. (So, Kanata "Canada" vs kanata "Canadian").

All of this may be subject to change.

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constructedlanguages.net

When you keep saying what I am talking about has something to do with grammar and not with capitalization - the phenomena I describe is much more similar to capitalization that you like to admit.

Here's some instances of you saying exactly this:
"not a variation on form for pronunciation or grammatical function."

"If you mean that the letters change to indicate some semantic or grammatical function, then yes, they are quite similar." <- yes, but that's not what happens so why bring it up? Also, letters do capitalize in some languages to mark grammatical / semantic things, look at fucking GERMAN! Look at how English capitalizes things, it tends to be for quite clearly semantic reasons.


Well, I guess you and I see grammatical function as two very different things.


Funny, as Hebrew and Arabic are the only two languages I used as fucking examples. Cute.

You should really drink some herbal tea or something because you seem to be awfully worked up.

In German, English and other European languages the capitals are used to mark the beginning of a sentence, proper nouns, acronyms, etc. The variations in Hebrew do have to do with where the letter falls in the word but nothing to do with marking the types of things that langs that use the Latin alphabet mark. In Arabic, the ta marbuta is used to mark feminine nouns and adjectives, which is a grammatical function. The fact that it falls at the end of the word is a result of the morphological gender, and thus grammatical, not orthographical. The rationale you seem to be using would suggest to me that the majority of Arabic letter forms be called "capitals" because they change shape based on placement within a word...that seems a bit of a stretch to me.

"The rationale you seem to be using would suggest to me that the majority of Arabic letter forms be called "capitals" because they change shape based on placement within a word...that seems a bit of a stretch to me."

I suggest you learn some reading comprehension.

"In German, English and other European languages the capitals are used to mark the beginning of a sentence, proper nouns, acronyms, etc"

In German, it consistently also marks nouns - which is grammatically conditioned!

"The variations in Hebrew do have to do with where the letter falls in the word but nothing to do with marking the types of things that langs that use the Latin alphabet mark."

Had you actually tried reading what I said instead of criticizing it, you'd realize I suggested altering what Hebrew does to get somewhere closer to what capitalization also is used for. Duh

" In Arabic, the ta marbuta is used to mark feminine nouns and adjectives, which is a grammatical function."

The ta marbuta is not what I am talking about, though... ta has a normal final form as well, ta marbuta is an alternative final form that does distinguish things grammatically.

final ta: ـت
ta marbuta: ـة

other ta: ت‎ ـت‎ ـتـ‎ تـ
(isolated, final, medial, initial).

Now, these are things one could do fun things out of in the way we can do fun things out of CAPITALIZATION, and they're things that are close enough in behavior to kind of feel relevant to be a thing to bring to people's attention. Does capitalization-like things have to conform to English style agrammatical capitalization (no it doesn't, as German has grammatical capitalization), so why not bring in other things as well like, capitalizatioN at the other end of the worD or anything like that. It's like you want to close people's minds. and that's what annoys me, really.

I had no technical definition of "capitalisation" in mind. If you have some interesting system with different forms or versions of your letters/characters that are used for different purposes, feel free to present it here.

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constructedlanguages.net

I'm really sorry Xing, I was going off of this:


I truly had no idea that you also wanted other types of character changes that have nothing to do with the generally accepted definition of "capitalization". I'll leave you to it.

Modicone: Alright. Everyone who has posted here know very well about rule #1.

This rule applies to both overt and more subtle attacks. I've deleted the posts that provided no real information on the topic at hand.

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