i wonder why english has capital letters? as a non native english speaker, i could not understand the logic behind it. it also increases key strokes on typewriters, computers, and makes it difficult for non natives. i am sure that if puritans of english would be mild, it could be reduced.
similarly i find the use of THE very problematic. why it cant be reduced to a minimum?
We (i.e. the creators of Pain in The English) developed a series of iPhone apps to teach preschool kids how to recognize letters and words. (My wife developed the characters and I did the coding.) Our own 4-year old daughter has been enjoying them. They are now available on Apple's App Store. You can search for "bitskis" on your iPhone, or visit the official website at bitskis.com.
If you have kids and own an iPhone, please check it out. It's $2.
At first I thought this was a silly question, but after researching it a bit I found that various languages have made concerted efforts to reduce the amount of capitalization over their histories, including English. Here is from Wikipedia:
Imagine if we had to capitalize all nouns. That would be a lot of work. Thank God it was changed.
A similar observation is made about the Japanese language by non-native speakers. They cannot understand why Kanji (the complex Chinese characters) has to be used in Japanese because they are actually not necessary. I believe there have been some organized efforts to eliminate or reduce the amount of Kanji. Some believe that it gives the Japanese a disadvantage in global competition because the complexity of Kanji adds to the amount of time spent on writing every piece of communication. The cumulative effect of this inefficiency can easily amount to millions or billions of dollars in loss.
So, in terms of efficiency, I believe English is one of the best.
The question is interesting, but I would reverse it: Why does English have lower-case letters? Most of the letters used in English derive from the Roman alphabet, which was entirely upper case. (The terms upper case and lower case derive from movable-type printing, and refer to the physical location of the racks—cases—where each set of type was located.) Lower-case letters derive from script, and predate printing.
According to Wikipedia: “Originally alphabets were written entirely in capital letters, spaced between well-defined upper and lower bounds. When written quickly with a pen these tended to turn into rounder and much simpler forms, like unicals. It is from these that the first minuscule hands developed, the half-unicals and cursive minuscule, which no longer stay bound between a pair of lines.”
The key script was Carolingian miniscule, which was “developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized by the small literate class from one region to another. It was used in Charlemagne’s empire between approximately 800 and 1200,” again according to Wikipedia.
The convention of capitalizing the first word in a sentence appears to have been part of Carolingian miniscule from the start. I don’t know when the practice of capitalizing certain words—nouns, mainly—developed, but it used to be much wider in scope. Writers as recent as Jonathan Swift commonly capitalized all nouns; the same is true of the American Declaration of Independence. I suspect that the purpose was improved legibility, particularly in hand-written documents. English has largely abandoned capitalized nouns, with specific exceptions, such as names. German, on the other hand, still capitalizes all nouns.
The reason English continues to retain capital letters is primarily legibility. Words written in lower-case letters, with their varied sizes and shapes, are indeed easier to read than words written in all-caps. But capital letters add a layer of information to the writing, signifying sentence starts, names, titles, and proper nouns. The current trend away from capitalization is driven largely by email and particularly by texting. In the latter, shifting between cases is cumbersome; in the former it is simply laziness. If you find it cumbersome to capitalize, be glad you’re not writing German.
I believe that the process of reading is not a pure mechanical digestion of words in a strict linear fashion. I’ve read that we absorb or “read” words in groups and decipher meaning at “another level”. I feel that the capitalisation of letters at the start of sentences (and the use of a full-stop and double space after) help us ingest meaning in the written form in a super useful way. I have an aunt who does not use any capitalisation (and no spaces after full-stops). It drives me crazy trying to read her emails – having to almost read letter by letter. It is stupid. I tiny effort on the part of the message creator to stick to a convention, goes a LONG way for the swift and easy interpretation of a message by all.
I’m not convinced that the reason English has capital letters is for legibility. Most alphabets don’t make a distinction between miniscule and capital letters – in fact the only alphabets that do are Roman, Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian. But Hebrew, Arabic and the many alphabets of south and southeast Asia don’t make the distinction.
Goofy makes a good point. I should have said that the best justification for keeping capital letters is legibility, for easier visual readability and because of the additional information capital letters impart. The reason English has them at all are, as I pointed out, historical.
it’s ok , english is universal language !!
i suupose english has to have capital letters beacuse you can clearly distingush and interpret a sentence .during reading there is no question capitals being useful they have a hachtec job in writing. i belive capitals in english are used one for clear interpretation and clear understanding
English does not have capital letters. The script it uses has. And the reason is tradition. The capital script was designed by sculptors in ancient roman times and acquired prestige since it was used in monuments. When written with a pen, it proved to be time-consuming and demanded a skillful scribe. Therefore, texts written entirely in capital letters were reserved for “de luxe” editions. The minuscule were developed to give comfort to the scribe and save on writing material (namely parchment), while maintaining legibility. So, they were reserved for “economy” editions. To add more dignity to the minuscule text, scribes began “decorate” it with the more prestigious capitals. So titles of books and chapters were written in capitals, as well as proper names. Also the first letter, and sometimes, the first word, or line of a chapter or paragraph. This practice receded with time to using capitals only for the first letter of words of a title, proper names or periods (from a full stop to another).
Carolingian scribe, your post was certainly interesting, except for one thing. Why did you start by saying “English does not have capital letters”? Accurate or not, everything you posted explains why English DOES have capital letters!
Porsche10x, scrictly speaking, a language does not have to do with its writing system. Languages like Turkish for instance changed their writing system from the Arabic-based Ottoman script to a modified version of the Latin alphabet just recently (1928). So it is correct to say that the modern convention for writing the English language employs in fact capital letters, but it does not mean that if you abolish them you will have a different language.
In short, the reason for the use of capitals in writing English, and other languages, is a tradition with roots on aesthetics, not on linguistics. As for the accuracy of what I said, it is a good idea, for those who may be interested, to study paleography, especially the medieval scripts. I hope I could have shed some light on the matter.
Nobody has addressed Sunil Kumar’s second question:
“Similarly I find the use of “the” very problematic. Why it can’t be reduced to a minimum?”
That the questioner’s native language is one without articles may be inferred by the fact of the question itself.
Naturally the existence of articles in a new language would seem problematic for one used to none. But keep in mind the function of the word the: it establishes definiteness in a noun phrase. (For example, “the good book” means the Bible, while “a good book” could be Harry Potter.)
In languages without definite articles, definiteness still exists. However, it is established in other ways, such as by inflecting the noun or by employing an adjective that acts on the noun. Amongst languages with definite articles, English may have the simplest system: many European languages have three or more definite articles, English only one.
So as for reducing the use of “the,” it already has been reduced to a minimum. (Prior to Middle English there were three definite articles.) To eliminate it altogether would require structural changes to the language itself.
In English capital letters (or majuscules) are used at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns such as a person’s name, a country’s name or an organisation. In addition, majuscles are often used in headlines and advertising for visual impact. The original Latin alpahabet only used majuscles. Miniscules evolved from hand-writing of letters. The hand written letters were typical rounded and small – uncials, half-uncials and cursive appeared over time.
I think we still use capital letters because we like them. When you read a sentence or a name without capitals it doesn’t look right. We also inherited capitals from old English – letters Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) and Edh (or Eth) (Ð, ð). These letters represented various pronunciations of “th”. Basically, English is a living language and customs change or do not change based on style and custom. Currently, most English speakers prefer capital letters. Maybe if people become lazier, they will vanish…