Talk:Basque

Is Basque really a proper noun in this case? Juzeris 01:14, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In the case of both the language and a person of Basque origin yes I believe those are both proper nouns in English. — Hippietrail 03:32, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ok, I wouldn't argue about English in this situation. It seems to me that my language background, particularly Latvian, influence my understanding of the world and especially what is proper noun and what isn't. And editing late at night appears not very useful. :( Juzeris 00:22, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think proper nouns vary from language to language and at least in English there is great confusion arising from the fact that not all capitalised words are proper nouns. In this case I'm 90% sure that Basque meaning the language is a proper noun, but only about 90% sure that Basque meaning a person is a proper noun. In English we capitalise all country names and language names, and also adjectives derived from there. But even I'm not 100% sure! — Hippietrail 01:18, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That's what I was not aware of. Right now I can't think of any exclusion to the law of capitalising proper nouns in Latvian. I knew that in English you capitalise the nouns meaning countries, languages and the people representing those countries or languages. However, I hadn't really thought of it. In Latvian you would capitalise only the country, but not the language or people. Accordingly, in Latvian only the country name is a proper noun.

What about the names for the days of the week? And months? Are they proper nouns too? In this case I'm not sure about Latvian, though you don't capitalise these either. Juzeris 04:07, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The names of the days of the week and the months of the year are always capitalised in English but I'm honestly unsure if they are really proper nouns or not - intuition tell me to say yes but I'm hesitant. I should check the Wikipedia article again but I think its w:noun article is surprisingly bad! — Hippietrail 05:12, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)