SPECIAL NOTE: I am including an audio version of this. It should appear above. This is something I’m trying a time or two. I want feedback on it, please. My thought is that you could perhaps play it instead of read it if you are busy. It’s just something I’m experimenting with at the moment, so please do tell me what you think.
Disclaimer: I make no claim to knowing how to pronounce Latin words correctly.
Here’s the episode:
majuscule – a capitalized letter; a large letter
mayúscula – the Spanish cognate of the same meaning
I’ll admit right now that until I learned Spanish, I had never heard of the word “majuscule” in English. I’ve always heard and said either “use capital letters” or “use uppercase letters.” It would be much easier, more concise, and more precise to say, “use majuscules.”
In Spanish, if you want to indicate that a letter of a word should be capitalized, you use the word “mayúscula.” That’s it. There’s no other option, at least none that has presented itself in all the textbooks and readings I’ve done over the past thirty-plus years of studying and teaching Spanish. It makes perfect sense, too, and I really wish the use of “majuscule” was more common in English.
We use the word “minuscule” quite often, and “minuscule” originally was reserved to mean a lowercase letter. We now use that word for other things to indicate a tiny amount of something, but one of its meanings is “a lowercase letter.” In Spanish, it’s a cognate (“minúscula”) and that’s the word you use to indicate that a letter should be written in its lowercase form.
“Majuscule” and its Spanish cognate come from Latin majusculus which means “rather large,” and quite ironically is the diminutive of major. Major, in turn, comes from magnus which deals with something that is great or large.
The next time you feel the need to use all caps to shout at someone in a text message, think of those as all majuscules instead. That has a more regal sound, doesn’t it? Quite befitting the large size of those letters. Like saying “your majuscule” to them. Yep, “majesty” is a relative, as are other words dealing with the “majestic” qualities of something grand.
Those “majuscules” are large and important, so let’s bestow upon them their befitting title. The Spanish-speaking people have. Why don’t we?
Until next time. Please share this post or tell others about this bi-weekly newsletter. Thank you.
Tammy Marshall
Majuscule