[sw-l] Underlining Proper Name-Signs

Valerie Sutton sutton at SIGNWRITING.ORG
Sat Jun 4 15:38:04 UTC 2005


SignWriting List
June 4, 2005

Ingvild Roald wrote:
> In Norwegian, we do not capitalize nearly as much as you do in
> English. We capitaalize the proper names only, not their
> derivatives. Thus, we capitalise Norge (Norway) but not norsk
> (Norwegian).

Thank you for this explanation. That fits with what I have also seen
in Danish. And this fact was hard for me, as a foreigner, because in
US schools, I was taught that the name of a language, such as
Norwegian, is a proper name. I had never heard of the idea of a
derivative of a proper name...so I was seeing capitalization from a
foreign perspective. I guess you could say I have an accent when it
comes to capitalization - ha!

Meanwhile, the younger generation in the US is starting to drop
capitalization, so I am out-of-date in my own country too ;-)

Val ;-)
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