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.
