4 ms·

In German (and other languages) you capitalize every noun. When I was younger I found it confusing that English didn't do that. It seems that this kind of synta

• ubernostrum 11y ago
  English used to do this. You can still see evidence of it in things like the US Constitution, where the capitalization seems random until you remember English is a Germanic-family language and did this as recently as a couple hundred years ago: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America I. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. etc.
  • Al-Khwarizmi 11y ago
    Why is "defence" not capitalized then? A typo?
    • FoeNyx 11y ago
      That was bothering me too. At least, it is not a typo from ubernostrum, it's spelled "defence" in the original [1]. Moreover that's the British spelling of defense (is there a link with the lack of capital?). Also note that, instead of "Blessings", it is "Bleſsings" in the original. But they are roughly equivalent if you apply a compatibility decomposition in your unicode normalization (NFKD/NFKC). So where is the edit button for that constitution? Or do they only accept pull requests? [1] http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters_downloads.html http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters_downloads...
      • Al-Khwarizmi 11y ago
        Someone asked the same question here https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-word-defence-the-only-uncapitalized-noun-in-the-Preamble-to-the-U-S-Constitution https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-word-defence-the-only-uncap... but at least in my browser, I can't see the actual answer (it says "2 Answers" but I can only see one, which just confirms that the word is not capitalized).
    • lmm 11y ago
      Maybe defense is considered active in a way that Welfare and Tranquility are not?
    • Double_Cast 11y ago
      "common defense" is being used as an elision of "common defense of the People". The entire phrase is a noun phrase. But " defense" is a verb within the noun phrase.
  • rahimnathwani 11y ago
    In primary school, I was taught to capitalise nouns in titles. So, an essay title might be "The Man and his Dog" rather than "The man and his dog".
    • siberianbear 11y ago
      But that rule doesn't apply only to nouns: it applies to all words that aren't pronouns, conjunctions and articles. Hence, "To Kill a Mockingbird" ('kill' is a verb), "Malone Dies," etc.
      • rahimnathwani 11y ago
        That rule (the one I learned in primary school) does apply only to nouns. I'm not suggesting my primary school teacher's rule is the correct, most popular or best rule :) Personally, though, I find many US newspapers' headlines jarring due to excessive capitalisation.
      • legulere 11y ago
        There isn't one uniform rule for headings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Headings_and_publication_titles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Headings_and_publi...
• GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  Other languages also have more complex inclination and declension rules that add additional structure. (And for writing systems, c.f. the use of hiragana in Japanese for things like particles and verb endings).