Yes, but functionality that is about dealing with text for human consumption is properly the function of a library, not the core language, or even a single type

Yes, but functionality that is about dealing with text for human consumption is properly the function of a library, not the core language, or even a single type in the standard library. Human language and culture is too complex, fuzzy, and variable to hardwire its rules into a programming language specification. Character boundaries and character transformations are really only the beginning of it. Consider finding the end of an English word. Is an apostrophe at the end an actual apostrophe denoting the possessive case (of a plural word) or meant as a closing single quote (even where there are different symbols, they are often mixed up when doing data entry)? How do you pluralize words? You have to consider exceptions to the usual rules (e.g., a dictionary), words that only exist in the plural, languages that don't have the concept of plural words, etc.