Did you know that English and French have rather different ideas about capital letters?

In English, nationalities and languages are capitalised: English, French, Spanish, Englishman, Frenchwoman…

In French, however, things get a little more complicated!

The people get a capital letter, but the language and adjective don’t:

Les Français aiment le fromage.
J’aime le fromage français.
Je ne parle pas français.

So, in English, we write French, whether we’re talking about the people, the language or the adjective. In French, you have to think about which one you’re dealing with.

A LITTLE EXTRA INFO FOR GRAMMAR ANORAKS

If you’re the sort of person who gets disproportionately excited by a misplaced capital letter, you’ll love this bit.

There are quite a few differences between English and French when it comes to capitalisation. Most of them are completely automatic. We know the rules without really thinking about them — until we start learning another language and suddenly realise that the French have been doing things differently all along!

Days and months are normally written in lowercase in French:

lundi, mardi, janvier, février…

Religions and words describing religious groups are also generally written in lowercase in French:

Christian → chrétien
Muslim → musulman
Jew → juif
Hindu → hindou
Buddhist → bouddhiste

There are exceptions, of course — because what would French grammar be without a few little exceptions to keep us on our toes? But the basic rule is reassuringly simple: religions and their followers generally get a lowercase letter in French.

One interesting exception according to the Académie Francaise, is Islam. The name of the religion takes a capital in French but musulman, a follower of Islam, remains lowercase. And quite why that should be, is anyone’s guess!

And then there are titles.

In English, we write Doctor Black. In French, it’s le docteur Black.

So if you’re switching between English and French, don’t let those little capital letters catch you out. They’re tiny, but they can tell you quite a lot about which language you’re looking at!