this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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Linguistics

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[–] kunegis@mander.xyz 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Summary: It's all changes in capitalisation and writing things together or as two words.

Demonyms referring to people from cities or districts should now be spelt with a capital letter, as those referring to nationalities already are – e.g. “Krakowianin” (Cracovian)

Either lower case or upper case may be used for what the RJP calls “unofficial ethnic names” (some of which are used pejoratively), such as “Angol”/“angol” to refer to an Englishman (who should properly be called “Anglik”) or “Żabojad”/“żabojad” (literally “frog-eater”) for a Frenchman (who should properly be called “Francuz”)

Brand names should be spelt with a capital letter also when referring to an individual specimen, e.g. “Zaparkował czerwony Ford” (“He parked a red Ford”)

The prefix “pół-” (semi-) should be combined with the rest of the word in compounds like “półżartem” (half-joking)

The prefix “nie-” (un-, non-, not) should always be combined with adjectives and adverbs, regardless of semantic interpretation – previously writers could opt to write the words separately based on the specific meaning

Greater use of capital letters:

in proper nouns denoting geographical names like parks, churches, estates, castles, bridges, squares, avenues, etc. – the exception being the word “ulica” (street), which remains lower case. For example: ulica Józefa Piłsudskiego, Aleja Róż, Brama Warszawska, Plac Zbawiciela, Park Kościuszki

In the names of prizes, e.g. “Nagroda Nobla” (Nobel Prize)

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah, it's mostly fluff. It seems the RJP was aiming for consistency.

(I never understood this obsession with Capital Letters on Demonyms, though. Not just in Polish, but in German and English too. It doesn't really aid reading, does it?)