Monday, March 7, 2016

Soundalikes and capital letters

This china is from China and the turkey from Turkey - the capital letters make

Spelling and punctuation make all the difference to our understanding. Words in dictionaries are listed with small letters unless they always appear with capitals because this makes a difference to the sense, the meaning.

bare, bear
china, China (The small letter indicates a kind of pottery whilst the latter is a proper name for a Country.)
beer, bier
pare, pear
pier, peer
turkey, Turkey (The small initial letter is for the bird whilst the capital letter is for the country.
weir, we're

In English capital letters generally show a person or a city or a country. Ordinary nouns referring to groups of items are shown by small letters. However, in German all nouns have capital letters.

Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor. 

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