How many words are there in the English language?
Find out moreHow do you count words? Ashley Wagner discusses the question as part of our video on the number of words in the English language.
Capital and lower case letters in Spanish
There are parallels and important differences in the conventions regarding capitalization in Spanish and English.
Proper names in both languages take a capital, for example geographical names:
But whereas the names of countries in both languages take a capital letter, the names of their inhabitants, their language and adjectives derived from them all take lower case initial letters in Spanish:
| Francia | France |
| un francés | a Frenchman |
| una francesa | a Frenchwoman |
| los franceses | the French |
| el francés | French (the language) |
| francés, francesa | French (the adjective: un futbolista francés, a French fooball-player; a French word, una palabra francesa) |
| franceses, francesas | French (plural adjective futbolistas franceses, palabras francesas) |
Other nouns and adjectives, which in English would be spelt with a capital, take a small letter in Spanish:
| madrileño – ña | derived from Madrid |
| barcelonés – lonesa | derived from Barcelona |
| limeño – ña | derived from Lima |
| neoyorquino – na | derived from Nueva York |
| londinense | derived from Londres (London) |
| estalinista | Stalinist |
| maoismo | Maoism |
| peronismo | Peronism |
| cristiano –na | Christian |
| cristiandad | Christianity |
| lunes, martes | Monday, Tuesday |
| marzo, abril | March, April |
| el canciller alemán, Gerhard Schröder | the German Chancellor |
| el primer ministro chino | the Chinese Prime Minister |
It is by no means unusual to see these conventions broken, especially in advertising, but it is not safe to use such texts as models for your writing. Frequently advertising copy-writers are aiming to produce subtle effects, which will just appear to be a mistake in a different context.
See more from Grammar
Further reading
'Compliment' or 'complement': what's the difference?
Read moreA lot of people get compliment and complement confused: they’re pronounced in the same way and have very similar spellings but they have completely different meanings.
Should you capitalize the word "Internet"?
Read moreThe question of whether the word internet should be capitalized is so passionately debated and rife with controversy that it has its own Wikipedia article.
