Capitals in M&D

[Peter Zelz]

The capitalization could also be a holdover from the days in the misty past when English was much more akin to German than it is today.  I seem to recall (thinking back to language lessons twenty-five years ago) that German nouns are still capitalized.

z


-----Original Message-----
>From: Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Aug 9, 2006 10:31 AM
>To: robinlandseadel at comcast.net, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Capitals in M&D
>
>Thanks! That was a concrete and relevant answer I expected to get. In that 
>respect Pynchon's prose in M&D definitely mirrors the inconsistencies of the 
>orthography of the period.
>
>
>>From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
>>To: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
>>Subject: Re: Capitals in M&D
>>Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:24:10 +0000
>>
>>These are the sort of spelling and Capitalization writing conventions one 
>>would find in materials published during the Colonial era in what was about 
>>to become the United States of America. Noah Webster was developing the 
>>first dictionary of "American" English at the time. In pre-"Websterized" 
>>written English, normalized, consistent rules for capitalization and 
>>spelling were absent. I remember an edition of Bartholomew Fair, where the 
>>spelling was deliberately (and quite creatively) inconsistent, in order to 
>>more accurately reflect the actual pronunciations of the characters in the 
>>play. Mark Twain did a similar thing in "Huck Finn." The lack of 
>>consistency is the point. This individualizes the speech patterns of the 
>>characters in the works mentioned.
>>
>>http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1419108999&id=waCtwcOgcqgC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=bartholomew+fair&sig=Su5TlveqGIneAP7NwMUzcLfvX4g
>>
>>  http://lexrex.com/bios/nwebster.htm
>>
>>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
>>From: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>
>> > Another question for M&D connoisseurs. What is the principle of the 
>>(mock)
>> > 18th century capitalisation in this novel? Initially I thought it was 
>>quite
>> > simple: all the nounse are capitalised. But it turned out that some were
>> > not. I failed to see any systematic pattern there. If you know about the
>> > subject could you please enlighten me a bit?
>> >
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>>
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