Why isn't CultureInfo.NativeName always capitalized?

Question

Just out of curiousity...

In our application I list all the available translations in the following format "NativeName - EnglishName". For some languages the NativeName isn't capitalized eg.

"Deutsch - German"
"español - Spanish"
"français - French"
"italiano - Italian"
"Nederlands - Dutch"
"polski - Polish"

It's no big deal to capitalize the first letter, but what is the reason behind this?

Complaisance

Answer 1

From my vague memory of French, it is most likely because the name of the language in the language (ie. the name for French, in French) isn't capitalised.

That is, some languages capitalise proper nouns, some don't. Since the name of the language is a proper noun, it will be capitalised based on the rules appropriate to the language it is the name of.

There is a tool called Culture Explorer that allows you to easily browse all available cultures and there settings. I've found it very useful on a number of occasions.

Antiperspirant

+1 for an answer that is correct in general. However, I don't think the capitalization is generally because of being a noun - in English, language names are always capitalized, even when used as adjective, so it's rather the special rules for capitalizing a language name ;) In German, on the other hand, language names are only capitalized when used as a noun, because nouns are always capitalized, so in general your answer is right. Me only nitpicking a little bit. Oh, and if possible, I would give you another +1 for the link to Culture Explorer. – Autonomic

Speaking about English: It is because the language name is a proper noun, not just a noun. Proper nouns are capitalised. Equally, adjectives derived from proper nouns tend to keep their capitalisation. – Antiperspirant