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by yoho05 reminds you to DYOH on August 11th, 2006

yoho05 reminds you to DYOH

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Why does the English language capitalise the first person singular pronoun 'I' but no other pronoun?

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  • by ceejay007 on August 11th, 2006

    ceejay007

    Because we are important, so we deserve a capital 'I'.

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  • by hershey_squirter_ on August 14th, 2006

    hershey_squirter_

    The answer is buried in a history of the English language text—Pyles and Algeo, Origins and Development of the English Language, 4th ed., p. 187:

    I came to be capitalized, not through any egotism, but only because lower-case i standing alone was likely to be overlooked, since it is the most insignificant of the letters of the alphabet.

    This is found in the chapter on modern English to 1800, meaning in the period from 1500 to 1800. Thus, I take this to mean that the capitalization of I for the personal pronoun was a printer's invention during the early part of this period. I do know that in manuscripts from the Old and Middle English period, the forms were ic (OE) and ich (ME) and were never capitalized in script.
    — discovered by
    Dale W. Simpson
    Professor of English
    Missouri Southern State College
    Joplin, Missouri

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  • by tjatherton on August 11th, 2006

    tjatherton

    Because "I" is a proper noun and pronouns are not all proper nouns.

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  • by iwnit on October 5th, 2009

    iwnit

    "English I originates from Old English (OE) ic. This transformation from ic to i had happened by about 1137 in Northern England. Capitalisation of the word began around 1250 to clarify the single letter as constituting a full word: writers and copyists began to use a capital I because the lower-case letter was hard to read, and sometimes mistaken for part of the previous or succeeding word. This practice was already established by the introduction of movable type in the mid-15th century, and was also still considered to improve readability. Its predecessor ic had in turn originated from the continuation of Proto-Germanic ik, and ek; ek was attested in the Elder Futhark inscriptions (in some cases notably showing the variant eka; see also ek erilaz). Linguists assume ik to have developed from the unstressed variant of ek.

    Germanic cognates are: Old Frisian ik, Old Norse ek (Danish, Norwegian jeg, Swedish jag, Icelandic ég), Old High German ih (German ich) and Gothic ik.

    The Proto-Germanic root came, in turn, from the Proto Indo-European language (PIE). The reconstructed PIE pronoun is *egō, egóm, with cognates including Sanskrit aham, Hittite uk, Latin ego, Greek ἐγώ egō and Old Slavonic azъ.

    The oblique forms are formed from a stem *me- (English me), the plural from *wei- (English we), the oblique plural from *ns- (English us)."
    Source and further information:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_(pronoun%29

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  • by DudeLer 2 on October 5th, 2009

    DudeLer 2

    To give the letter individuality.

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  • by Nulinvoid on September 29th, 2006

    Nulinvoid

    hershey is partly correct. The reasoning from the citation is correct. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary however, it is actually done to prevent misreading handwriting not printing. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=I

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