German spelling - capitalisation

Guest Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:51 pm GMT

<<No, and I think that It didn't have them in the 17th century. Just think about writing with capital letters all the nouns. Completely useless.>>

You instead capitalize pronouns! You think it's useful, don't you?

You're obviously no german native speaker, you maybe just had a glimpse on german language, so you aren't able to judge the usefulness or uselessness of german orthographic conventions. If you're really interested in another language, you should accept its differences and peculiarities. You can talk about it, discuss it, but judging it as completely useless without really knowing the subject you're talking about, that's ignorant. Things like noun capitalisation has evolved over the centuries and therefore cannot be useless! If one language abandons it, so maybe that language can do without. But it's a matter of why that feature was dropped. Either because it was dispensable in that language, or it wasn't but imposed by the whim of politicians or third class linguists (that holds for german ''Rechtschreibreform'').

Dear Guest, I was talking about the usefulness of capitalization in English, not German. Nouns are easily identifiable in English. I think that capitalization in German is very German in the sense that it is very square-minded, everything must be properly arranged and there must not be confussion. I prefer better the somewhat crazy English spelling.

Barev dzez, Guest.
Intchpbés eq?
Lav em.
Yekeq tzanotananq.

Ok, you're talking about capitalisation in English. I prefer the English spelling as it is, too. But I don't judge it crazy. There're a lot of threads in this forum complaining about English orthography and making proposals on doing better, making a reform. But that would end up in a real mess.

A language's orthography -- if it had the chance of developing over the centuries -- is part of the history of that language, it's its orthographic skin, you can't easily slip off. You instead can -- or should -- be proud of it. Everyone is proud of a long lasting history of hers or his country, a company is proud of being established decades, centuries ago, so why not being proud of the orthography of one's language? Although I'm no English native speaker, I'm proud of that language and it's orthography. As I am german, I'm proud of the classic, i.e. pre 1996 orthography of my mother tounge, because it has developed over a long period of time.

<<I think that capitalization in German is very German in the sense that it is very square-minded, everything must be properly arranged and there must not be confussion.>>

And what'a about the -ly on English adverbs? German does not mark adverbs at all, and so do other languages like e.g. Turkish, which is highly regular, much more regular than German. So you can apply your prejudices just to yourself.

Correction: ... and its orthography, of course.

I guess that adverbs are identified in German by the position of them within a sentence. German would not leave that huge room to confussion.

Barev dzez, Guest.
Intchpbés eq?
Lav em.
Yekeq tzanotananq

Mallorqui,
Em que lingua escreveste? Hebreu? Nao consigo perceber nada, contudo parece-me hebreu, enganei-me? O que quer dizer o que disseste? Obrigado

Creo que era un maleficio gitano. Por eso no se entiende, ya que de lo contrario no tendría efecto sobre ti.

Ադրբեջաներենը, պատկանում է ալթայական լեզվաընտանիքի թյուրքական խմբի հարավ-արևմտյան՝ օզուզյան ճյուղին: Տարածված են նաև թուրքերեն և պարսկերեն լեզուները։: Հավատացյալները մուսուլման են, հիմնականում շիիթներ։ Սունիթնոր:

What a beautiful alphabet! I adore it! It's a sort of precious embroidery!
What language is that?

Georgian?

Armenian

Wow, pretty as it is it looks like an alphabet consisting almost entirely of 'u's' lol