The English Oracle

Should words be capitalized because they're loanwords?

--------------------------------------------------
Hire the world's top talent on demand or became one of them at Toptal: https://topt.al/25cXVn
and get $2,000 discount on your first invoice
--------------------------------------------------

Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Peaceful Mind

--

Chapters
00:00 Should Words Be Capitalized Because They'Re Loanwords?
00:31 Accepted Answer Score 5
01:13 Thank you

--

Full question
https://english.stackexchange.com/questi...

--

Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

--

Tags
#capitalization

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 5


No, loanwords as a rule aren't capitalized, and they shouldn't be capitalized just because they're loanwords.

Noh, however, is sometimes viewed as a proper name for a type of Japanese drama. Proper names are capitalized in English. That's the only explanation. Italics aren't always available, especially in databases.

There's another Japanese word, Go, for 囲碁 (igo) (圍棋 wéiqí in Chinese), the board game with black and white stones. The name of this game is also capitalized because it's the same as a very common English verb. This distinguishes Go the Chinese/Japanese board game from go the English verb, which is never capitalized unless it comes at the beginning of a sentence. Sometimes this word is spelled Goe and Igo.