[Wikipedia-l] About language names

[Alfio Puglisi]

On Tue, 1 Feb 2005, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>>And Gerard, please note that Alfio, unlike you, is a native Italian speaker.
>>
>>Mark
>>
>>
>Which is a totally irrelevant remark. fyi I asked Sabine, she thinks
>that having it as it is written is to be preferrred; her argument is
>that things that are "strange" atract more curiosity. Her credentials as
>to the Italian language are obvious and adequate.

Let's keep the tone relaxed, people. I'll just go on record saying that I
couldn't care less if "Italiano" is capitalized or not, and I think that a
vast majority of native speakers feel the same.

The old, formal rule was to always have language names and nationality
adjectives ("the English people") always capitalized, like one can find in
any book from, say, 50 years ago. Common use nowadays is less strict, one
can find both forms. A capitalized nationality adjective feels slightly
strange, a capitalized language name less so.

So the choice can be freely made on different grounds than language
correctness.

Alfio