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I recently asked myself this seemingly simple question, but could not find any answers on my own.
Are there any natural (or constructed) languages that capitalize (depending on their alphabet of course) in a different way than English, German and the like? So, instead of

This is my friend Bob.

they might do something like

thiS is my friend boB.

Before you ask, no, I'm not asking for ltr-languages that capitalize the beginning of their words. I'm asking for any language (with a capitalization possible) where names, proper nouns or whatever else gets capitalized not at the beginning, but at the ending or even the middle of their words.

P.S.: I'm aware of some hyphenated words that have a kind of camel case, especially in German. I'm not looking for that.

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    If you count quadcameral (unlike bicameral) scripts, one obvious answer would be Arabic Alphabet, where each letter can have 2 to 4 distinct forms (initial, middle, final, and isolated). Hence, every word would have 3←[…2←]2←1 form, where 1, 2, and 3 are the initial, middle, and final letter forms, correspondingly. So, the final form may or may not be an answer, depending on your understanding of the question.
    – Be Brave Be Like Ukraine
    Commented Apr 1, 2016 at 21:04
  • Oh, nice suggestion. I didn't know that the styles are counted as "camerals" (New term as well, thank you Sir)
    – Adowrath
    Commented Apr 1, 2016 at 21:05
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    See also Greek final Sigma, copied in English as a final alternate to Long S until 1800. And also Hebrew Sophith letters, like the square final Mem or the long final Pe.
    – jlawler
    Commented Apr 1, 2016 at 21:35
  • Klingon? No, not really.
    – Colin Fine
    Commented Apr 1, 2016 at 21:51
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    If you are really asking about "special words" and not about words in general, then Arabic, Hebrew and Greek are totally irrelevant for this question.
    – fdb
    Commented Apr 1, 2016 at 22:39

3 Answers 3

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The Zulu language does not capitalise noun class markers but capitalises the proper noun itself, as in the name of the language isiZulu (isi- is the singular noun class 7 marker).

Also, in Irish Gaelic orthography, the mutations of capitalised nouns are not capitalised, for instance nGaillimh, the nasal mutation of Gaillimh 'Galway'.

(As Colin Fine points out in a comment, Klingon perhaps, although the capitals in romanisation can distinguish different sounds, and unlike Gaelic and Zulu orthography, are nothing to do with the uppercasing convention for proper nouns :)

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    Also: Paul McCartney
    – Yellow Sky
    Commented Apr 2, 2016 at 16:34
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Italian does this for formal letter writing:

  • informarLa = informare (to inform) + La (you [formal direct object pronoun])
  • portarGliela = portare (to give) + Gli (to you [formal indirect object pronoun]) + la (it)

Notice that La ≠ la.

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Javanese has 8 letters that are used instead of ordinary letters in all positions (initial, medial, final) in certain proper names. They are called “aksara murda” or “huruf kapital”. You can find them here: https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksara_Murda (in Indonesian only).

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