Talk:diegueño

Capitalization

In English, this tribal name is capitalized. I'm not entirely convinced it isn't capitalized in Spanish, at least in some sources. 71.66.97.228 18:31, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in English tribal names and languages are always capitalized. In Spanish they are not. Los norteamericanos hablan inglés, los españoles hablan castellano, los aztecas hablan náhuatl, y los indios diegueños hablan diegueño. If it is capitalized in some sources, the sources are either not Spanish or are incorrect. —Stephen ^(Talk) 19:02, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I didn't know that. In this search, it appears that about 80% of the sources have the tribal names uncapitalized and about 20% have them capitalized. 71.66.97.228 01:07, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

That’s due to contamination from English. Most languages that have upper- and lowercase do not capitalize nationalities or languages. German does, because German capitalizes all nouns; Dutch does, a habit they’ve borrowed from the English; Turkish does, again because of English influence; and French capitalizes nationalities but not languages. But Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Russian, Bulgarian, Greek, Hungarian, and many others do not capitalize either nationalities or languages. Very commonly, if someone translates an English page into another language, the translator will copy both the English capitalization and the punctuation (punctuation has different rules and uses in each language, and none are exactly like ours). —Stephen ^(Talk) 01:35, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Most of the sources with capitalized tribal names seem to be Spanish-language publications of various branches of the U.S. government. 71.66.97.228 05:31, 25 June 2011 (UTC)