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Sentence #3493580

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Comments

Ooneykcall Ooneykcall January 7, 2015 January 7, 2015 at 8:29:59 PM UTC flag Report link Permalink

At the time, written and later printed texts weren't well-spaced, and such a small one-letter word could easily go unnoticed, and that would be inconvenient since it's one of the most frequent words in the language, that's why (if my memory has it right).

CK CK November 21, 2015 November 21, 2015 at 3:25:18 AM UTC flag Report link Permalink

Since "I" is only a one-letter word, I wonder if the phrase "with a capital letter" is correct.

Objectivesea Objectivesea November 21, 2015 November 21, 2015 at 4:14:29 AM UTC flag Report link Permalink

I'm not sure I understand CK's point. The Tatoeba sentence expresses a question that many foreign-language learners of English might wonder about. Different languages have different rules. English capitalizes the first-person pronoun, and German capitalizes the second-person pronoun, for example. Rules are established that codify common practice. English and German could have chosen to not capitalize those words, but such innovations are mostly found in poems like those of e.e. cummings, but are looked upon as wrong elsewhere.

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License: CC BY 2.0 FR