Re: national lowercase day (14 october)

 Ar an cúigiú lá déag de mí Deireadh Fómhair, scríobh Ross Clark:

 > On 15/10/2024 11:56 a.m., Christian Weisgerber wrote:
 > > On 2024-10-14, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
 > >
 > >> but bicamerality did not become general in europe until 1300
 > >> and took some time to more or less stabilize in english
 > >> you probably noticed in the text quoted yesterday from the time of henry
 > >> iv, all nouns capitalized (as still in german)
 > >
 > > In the 19th century, there was a fashion in the German linguistic
 > > literature, I think, to abandon noun capitalization.  Notably the
 > > _Deutsches Wörterbuch_ (German Dictionary) started by the Brothers
 > > Grimm stuck to this.
 > >
 >
 > I meant to mention that something like this capitalization practice persisted
 > in English at least until late in the 18th century. I noticed it when reading
 > narratives of voyages to the Pacific at that period. More particularly, it
 > shows up in (carefully transcribed) journals of voyagers such as Cook. An
 > example from George Robertson at Tahiti, 1767:
 > ----------------------
 > All the way that we ran allong shore we saw the whole coast full of Canoes, and
 > the country had the most Beautiful appearance its possible to Imagin from the
 > shore side one two and three miles Back their is a fine Leavel country that
 > appears to be all laid out in plantations, and the regular built Houses seems
 > to be without number, all along the Coast, they appeard lyke long Farmers Barns
 > and seemd to be all very neatly thatched, with great Numbers of Cocoa Nut
 > Trees....
 > ----------------
 >
 > This looks roughly like capitalization of lexical words for emphasis, rather
 > than on any grammatical basis.

I wonder have any studies been done comparing uneducated German-speakers to
uneducated English-speakers and the skill in determining parts of speech. It
wouldn’t shock me if the English-speakers were worse at it, given less need to
decline nouns and adjectives. I suppose these days it would have to be done on
pre-literate children.

 > By contrast the published accounts, even when based on journals, seem to have
 > completely modern usage of capitals.

--
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