Thursday, April 25, 2019

orthography - Is writing the pronoun "i" in lowercase a feature of Indian English?

The Rule



The personal pronoun “I” is always capitalized in English, regardless of its position in a sentence. This is an orthographic convention that every native speaker should know.



Whenever I have seen anyone breaking this ‘rule’ online, irrespective of their nationality, I've tended to make the following assumptions:





  1. a typo

  2. fatigue (pressing that shift key can be so exhausting)

  3. ignorance



For ignorance I don't mean stupidity, I mean that the writer (of any nationality) either chooses to ‘ignore’ the rule, or he is ignorant of its existence. This can be caused by a person's first language (or mother tongue) interference. For example, the italian personal pronoun, io, is only capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, and coincidentally, the lowercase letter is also adopted for the words italiana and italiano.



So it was quite an eye-opener to read the following, posted on EL&U nearly three years ago.





But i read a fantastic article some years back that convinced me to write a small "i" instead of a capital one, and to make the y capital in "You" to show more respect to the person, and attach a modesty to oneself.
jeega (Sep 5 '12)




I'm not 100% certain, but I believe jeega is Indian, and it's indisputable that many Indian speakers who are learning English have a tendency to write the subject pronoun “I” in lowercase.



Questions





  1. How established is this praxis among Indian English speakers?

  2. Is writing i a means of circumventing the perceived limitations of the English language?

  3. Can anyone confirm this practice, and/or provide a link to the aforementioned article?

  4. Because English is continuously evolving and it has become, for better or for worse, the 21st century lingua franca, I wouldn't be surprised if I was written i in two generation times. Are there any studies on this eventuality?






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