Other Languages
In other languages there are more, or fewer, of these pairs depending on that language's capitalization rules. For example, in German, where all nouns are capitalized, there are many pairs such as Laut (sound) ~ laut (loud) or Morgen (morning) ~ morgen (tomorrow). In contrast, in Italian, as well as Spanish, very few words (except proper names) are capitalized, so there are extremely few, if any, such pairs. (An example is Messa (Mass) ~ messa (feminine past participle of mettere = to put), though the former is sometimes spelled with a lowercase m too.)
The following list includes only "dictionary words". Personal names (Mark/mark), place-names (China/china), company names (Fiat/fiat), names of publications (Time/time) etc. are all excluded as too numerous to list. Adjectives derived from placenames (e.g. Italic/italic) are allowed. Pairs in which one word is simply a secondary meaning of the other – e.g. Masonry (secret society), which is in essence a peculiar use of the word masonry (wall building) – are omitted.
Read more about this topic: Capitonym
Famous quotes containing the word languages:
“The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding.”
—Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1934)
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