# Spelling of nationalities and languages



## Whodunit

In this thread, jazyk claimed that I had to use a lower-case h for "lingua hispanica." However, as far as I know nationalities and languages are written with upper-case initials, just as in English.

How would you personally these sentences; the languages and nationalities with a lower-case or upper-case initial?

*R*omani me *L*atine bene locutus esse putabant.
The Romans thought I spoke Latin well.

*G*ermani in *I*taliam invaserunt.
The Germans invaded in Italy.


----------



## vachecow

I was always taught to capitalize the proper nouns, but I don't think the Romans  always did that.


----------



## Whodunit

vachecow said:


> I was always taught to capitalize the proper nouns, but I don't think the Romans always did that.


 
Well, I wouldn't use the Romans as a backup, for they wrote their messages in all-capital letters. How did the philosophers and scholars write? What about Modern Latin? Should the names of languages and nationalites be capitalized?


----------



## jazyk

I've always seen nationalities spelled with majuscules and languages with minuscules in Latin, but I don't think it's a big deal.


----------



## mateo19

I see that this is an old post, but I've just started studying Latin here in Argentina and I'd like to put my two cents in.  Orginally in Latin, there were no lower case letters...  So a nationality would have been written ROMANUS for example.  I don't know when lower case was invented, but I am very happy to write "romanus" just like that.  Iulius Caesar romanus fuit.  I like the Spanish way of not using capital letters..  Soy estadounidense, but the French Je suis Américain.  That's correct, right?  Take care, keep studying LATIN!!!


----------



## Whodunit

mateo19 said:


> I see that this is an old post, but I've just started studying Latin here in Argentina and I'd like to put my two cents in. Orginally in Latin, there were no lower case letters... So a nationality would have been written ROMANUS for example.


 
If at all, it would have been ROMANVS. 

However, I've already pointed out that we don't want to concentrate on epigraphs (for the letters were always capitalized and agglunated in them), but on the scripts of scholars and monks.

[quoter]I don't know when lower case was invented, but I am very happy to write "romanus" just like that.[/quote]

The history of the Latin alphabet and its letters were discussed here. 



> Iulius Caesar romanus fuit.


 
In my textbooks, it's always spelled "Romanus."



> I like the Spanish way of not using capital letters.. Soy estadounidense, but the French Je suis Américain. That's correct, right? Take care, keep studying LATIN!!!


 
I wouldn't be that sure about French. Here I would spell it "je suis américain", mais je ne suis pas sûr, si c'est une influence allemande.  En outre, il faut que je te dise que je n'écris que des adjectifs, p.ex. "Je suis un garçon américain." That's a case where you would spell the nationality with a lower-case letter.


----------



## judkinsc

Nationalities are capitalized in French when used as nouns, but not when they are used as adjectives. Languages are not capitalized. "un Américan, un Français, allemand, anglais, je suis allemand" etc.

I imagine that Latin is capitalized following the preferences of the editor and the region in which it is composed. Capital letters in English followed a Germanic pattern--more-or-less--until the 19th century, when only proper nouns were capitalized.

Lower-case letters existed in Greek, but not Classical Latin. The use of minuscule pre-dated the use of an entirely majuscule alphabet, in that way.


----------



## Whodunit

judkinsc said:


> Nationalities are capitalized in French when used as nouns, but not when they are used as adjectives. Languages are not capitalized. "un Américan, un Français, allemand, anglais, je suis allemand" etc.8/quote]
> 
> That's how I would have used it by feel, but I wasn't sure.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I imagine that Latin is capitalized following the preferences of the editor and the region in which it is composed. Capital letters in English followed a Germanic pattern--more-or-less--until the 19th century, when only proper nouns were capitalized.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Well, in German nationalities are usually not capitalized (there are, of course, exceptions like nominalized adjectives etc.), but every other noun is spelled with an upper-case initial.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Lower-case letters existed in Greek, but not Classical Latin. The use of minuscule pre-dated the use of an entirely majuscule alphabet, in that way.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> As far as I know, they spelled Ελληνικά with a capitalized initial letter even when lower-case letters were in use.
Click to expand...


----------



## judkinsc

Whodunit said:


> As far as I know, they spelled Ελληνικά with a capitalized initial letter even when lower-case letters were in use.



You misread that, Whodunit. I said the miniscule was in use, but not that it was exclusively used, in Ancient Greek.


----------

