Somelanguagescapitalize several of theirpronouns . Some do n’t capitalise any of them . English is an odd duck in that it capitalizes only the first person singular , I.
Why ? aboveboard , linguist and historian are n’t sure . They have been unable to find any record of a definitive explanation . We know this much : In erstwhile and other Middle English , the German - flavoredichwas used as the personal pronoun . Around the middle period of in-between English , personal pronoun proliferated andIch , ich , Ic , ic , Iandiwere all used in writing with varying frequency . By the end of the Middle English full point , Istood alone , tall and triumphant . Thechwas dropped in one of the major phonic changes that English experienced during these days , but the reason the soloisuddenly got the capital intervention is less clear .
Scholars have offer some account .
For one , capitalisation might have been alinguisticconcern . WhenIappears , it ’s oftentimes the subject of the time , and may have gotten capitalized to announce its importance in a statement .
In a similar nervure , capitalisation might be psychological , affirming the importance not of the subject , but of the author . One problem with this hypothesis is , if you ’re going to capitalizeIout of ego , why not do the same to every appearance ofme ?
Another explanation is that the capitalIhad less to do with language and more to do with the practicalities of handwriting . The lower caseilooks a small weak on its own . Some historians — including Charles Bigelow , a eccentric historiographer and house decorator of the Lucida and Wingdings font families — think that aniall by itself would have become illegible after multiple handlings and readings of a holograph , and scrivener had to make the pronoun diagrammatically sturdier to stand up the trial of time and smudge helping hand .
A version of this narrative was issue in 2012 ; it has been update for 2024 .
