Capital ideas

We talk about learning our ABC, but a glance at most alphabets for children soon shows us that they have to learn not ABC but AaBbCc.  In other words two, not one, alphabets - the upper and lower case versions - are involved.  The two have developed over the centuries through the combination of different typographical styles - the original capital letters alongside the more cursive lower case ones. Once the system arose and was understood, however, it was soon put to other uses.

For example, writing a word in capitals is generally taken to mean that it is EMPHASISED.  The greater size of upper case letters obviously helps here, but by now it has gone beyond mere weight and entered the realm of convention.  These printed equivalents of the shout can be found everywhere, especially in advertisements whose purpose is to catch your attention just as a bawling street vendor might. 

Against this background it is interesting to compare the differences between the main European languages that use the Latin character set.  Like everyone else, the French employ capitals at the beginning of sentences - an obvious place to use this marker as well as for proper names and titles.  The latter is a perfectly logical system, picking out only unique people, places or objects with a special signifier.  Otherwise they favour no other words by making them stand out in texts.

The Italians and Spanish extend the French system slightly.  Because they have a polite and indirect form for addressing others - using the third person singular instead of the second person - they often mark it as the honorific it is.  Thus 'you' in Italian is 'Lei' - literally she, a condensed version of some such courtier's phrase as 'His or Her Grace' since 'grace' is a feminine word.  The oblique cases - 'to you' etc - may be similarly marked with a capital, as can the plural versions, Loro or, increasingly, Voi.  Spanish follows a similar system, except that the word for 'you' is 'Usted' and the old abbreviation 'Vd,' is used.

The Germans also have a polite second person pronoun which they mark with a capital: 'Sie'.  It too represents the contraction of some older phrase such as 'your graces' and so it is plural.  But the German system is vastly differently from that of the Romance languages.  Where they apply capitals only to proper nouns, the Teutonic approach is to use a capital letter for every noun.  The result is a text bristling with semi-aggressive upper case characters, like someone who begins each word loudly but thinks better of it.  In fact, disconcerting as this system is to the foreigner, it too is highly logical; it seems to flow from the German's rigorously philosophical approach to things.  Apparently they see each noun as part of the Platonic essence of that object.  A table 'Tafel' has within it tableness, and so is worthy of a distinguishing capital letter. Thus every text, every conversation, becomes a metaphysical dissertation.

But when it comes to English, what do we find?  None of the German's rigour, none of the courtesy of the Latinate tongues.  Instead, the one word, the one idea accorded the supreme honour of the capital alongside proper names is that tiny word 'I'.  No wonder there was an empire.

(1.3.92)

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