Re: national lowercase day (14 october)

On 10/15/2024 9:46 AM, Aidan Kehoe wrote:

  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.

Not trying to be snide but, .... There are some questions about how,
when, and if our American children do become literate. I suppose that
many other countries are asking the same sorts of questions about their
youngsters. The electronics and media influences might be even stronger
than those of linguistic differences.

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

--
Jeff Barnett