How To Use Capital And Lowercase 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.