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But ‘Mandalorian’ should be capitalized. They’re not a different species, most of them are human. They’re a culture/nationality/ethnicity/religious cult.
The same may go for Klingon (though I’m not as familiar with Star Trek, so I can’t be sure). Maybe it shouldn’t be capitalized when you’re referring to the species, but it may be that the word is typically used to refer to the culture/ethnicity, rather than the species.
The thing with a lot of sci-fi is that most planets have only one sentient species and only one culture (that the reader/viewer/player interacts with, anyway). If the world building is like that, it makes a lot of sense to just call the species/culture after the planet, or the planet after the species/culture.
If only it had no stupid third party launcher, I’d love to play Mass Effect again. Great series.
I do have it on 360, I could always play on that I suppose.
Thank you Mass Effect for properly categorising aliens as just another species of animal. Now, let me romance that dog real quick.
We will 100% capitalise the names of alien races as if they were Romans etc. if only because that is what most sci-fi has done for decades now. Life imitates art in some cases.
Aren’t humans commonly referred to as Earthlings? I do respect the point you are making, especially with reference to the Star Trek species.
We’re Terrans from Terra.
By The Emperor?
I thought we were Humans from Hume.
From Humus.
You’re not that far off, really.
Not Kantians from Kant?
Some people also claim they’re just platonic. I don’t know if Plato is a planet, though.
Did you hear about Plato? That’s messed up, right?
Probably taken from some latin language to sound cooler (eg: italians) where the Earth is called Terra
Is “Klingon” a species or is it the name of a racial or ethnic group? You don’t capitalize the name of a species, but you do capitalize the name of racial and ethnic groups, like African Americans.
Because of that, maybe it would be proper to say “We’re at war with the Klingons.” But, also “I’m not an expert on klingon biology.”
This gets confusing because in Sci Fi, the common idea is that humanity has reached a point where there are galactic empires. Because of that, a single planet rarely has more than one racial or ethnic group on it. Everybody from the planet Vulcan is part of one Vulcan racial, ethnic and cultural group. In fact, it’s pretty rare for there to be a warp-capable species who doesn’t have some unified government.
So, in most Sci Fi, the name of the planet is the name of the species, and also the name of the single racial and ethnic group that species belongs to. In the 21st century, “humans” is a species, because there’s no distinct racial or ethnic group that represents all of humanity. But, in the 31st century (assuming humans survive that long) maybe it will be Humans because we’ll all consider ourselves to be one unified group, and it will be useful to distinguish us from Siriusans, Procyonians, etc.
I think in the context of Star Trek, Klingons are a racial or ethnic group. They’re part of a galactic empire
Foreign cultures get capitalized names, animals do not.
Those people are Klingons, their species is klingon. They come from Qo’nos.
That’s because all sci-fi alien species are monocultures (Mass Effect included though).
My head canon is that the shows simply show the aliens from a human perspective. A Klingon would laugh if you told them Klingons are a monoculture. In fact, they would probably pull out a knife and threaten to slit your throat:
DO ALL KLINGONS LOOK ALIKE TO YOU??
Sometimes it’s also acknowledged in universe. Like that early Babylon 5 episode when there is a day of Earth culture or something and they showcase their hundreds of religions, and all the aliens are like “holy shit we only have one!”.
Mass Effect is also kida guilty of that, though it’s more of “human genetic diversity” that makes them special (not sure if it’s better or worse).
They also usually have one place of origin, or if there are multiple, it’s just vaguely in a direction (lots of planets have a north), or an off-world colony, so the whole species is named for the planet they came from.
Martians are from Mars, Vulcans are from Vulcan, Humans are from Hume, etc. You don’t tend to have them mention any more specific regions than that. Where on Earth do Earthlings come from? Why, the Earthling city, of course.
That’s because all sci-fi alien species are monocultures
And all sci-fi planets have exactly one type of terrain/biome.
You got desert planets, swamp planets, forest planets, ice planets, hell – even city planets … but you never see any planet that has similar diversity to Earth … or even similar diversity to California. In sci-fi, every planet looks the same across its entire surface.
Desert planets and, to a lesser extent, ice planets, are actually pretty realistic. We have more desert planets in our own star system than Earth-like planets. Of course, they’re not habitable like sci-fi desert planets.
Right, if we’re talking about humans who are French… One gets capitalized the other does not. “French” is a proper noun “human” is not.
But this is an English rule. If we were writing in French we would not capitalize the reference to the people of a specific nation.
And if we were writing in German we’d capitalize every single noun, which is simultaneously more and less confusing imo, lol
I’ve been assuming the lemmy app I use is German in origin because it capitalizes a lot of nouns at random. Not all of them. I don’t know how it chooses.
Nitpick: it’s absolutely correct to capitalise Mandalorian as it’s a territory/culture with a proper noun.
Are we Earthlings or earthlings?
We’re just Earthlings, worms are Earthlings and earthlings.
At the moment, if you’re talking about Earth as a territory, it gets capitalised as a proper noun. It’s not got a universal culture that everyone from Earth participates in, so there’s not a proper noun to identify that culture.
Read the post again. Why do we conceptualise these aliens as a culture, rather than a species? Why did we name them after their planet?
Read the post again, they don’t know Mandalorian is a culture and not a species, they list them among species , before talking about culture. Nitpick posts have to have their facts straight, lest they be nitpicked themselves.
I see. I did not know
Yeah … most Mandalorians are human.
I would bet that as soon as we found another intelligent species, we would start capitalizing Humans.
“Greetings, Earthlings.” 👽
The universal translator is doing its best not to call everyone Us from the planet Home.
Or Dirt.
No way! I’m Us from Home too! Small universe
checks definition of a proper noun
A proper noun is a specific (i.e., not generic) name for a particular person, place, or thing.
😯 Tumblr user is right!
also kind of embarrassed that I had to Google the definition to double check, because:
I’ve been doing a course on “Foundations of Writing”, inspired by the historical school syllabus The Trivium once used across Europe.
It explores the rigid - but generally unwritten - rules of how the English language works, so among them was that definition of when to capitalise words. I found that particular fascinating because when I learned it at school it was just explained as “names of places people or things” which isn’t significantly more simple than the afforementioned, correct definition.
So by that modern-school rule, one would perhaps assume the name of species names (or nationality names) falls under the capitalisation rule - but alas, no!
I think it’s pretty obvious that humanity is a culture, and it’s not a very good one. I’m otherkin; I don’t identify as human. I wouldn’t want to be a human, because humanity as a construct is used to justify so much evil. When people wanted to do the slave trade or the holocaust or colonisation, they did it by stripping humanity from these groups. Because human culture says it’s acceptable to treat nonhumans this way. And that’s why I want nothing to do with such a toxic construct. I’m not interested in appealing to colonial values.
Well I don’t think that’s inherent to humanity or humanism. I agree though that humanity isn’t a value in of itself, because if we accept that it is, stripping someone of that humanity is enough to denigrate and mistreat them. I also see the colonialist baggage that humanist philosophy continues to carry to this day. If we’d ever manage to establish contact with nonhumans, I’d definitely be on the lookout for anyone who suddenly starts talking about progressivism and “humanist values”.
Good news! We already made contact with intelligent nonhuman life. I’m one of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin
French has a specific quirk (one among a metric ton of others) with this subject. The country and the country’s people names get a capital, but the nationality adjective does not.
Les Anglais d’Angleterre sont des personnes anglaises.
The English from England are English people.
I think it may also be the case for all Romance languages.
What about in German?
All nouns are capitalised in German, so you don’t have this weird dichotomy in the first place…
The concept of proper nouns is so stupid and only leads to discussions like these.
There are no improper Nouns!
Are we not supposed to be capitalizing species names? I just don’t do it because I’m lazy.
Yeah I thought they were considered proper nouns and therefore are capitalized by default?
I don’t understand, do you capitalise duck and cow and eagle? Those aren’t proper nouns
No because those are general names for a type of animal. I wouldn’t capitalize dog or cat but I’d capitalize German Shepard or Maine Coon.
Well, you said species. German Shepherd isn’t a species. The species is dog (canis familiaris).
That’s a fair point. I suppose in my mind I just saw things like dog cat duck lion bear as derivatives. General terms to name a specific group of animals or species. Calling them by their actual scientific names feels more like a proper noun to me.
I wouldn’t capitalize brown bear but I’d capitalize Grizzly or Kodiak.
English is dumb anyway so it’s whatever at this point
Well, I think that’s kinda the point of the OOP. Species aren’t supposed to be anything special. By capitalising the names of alien species we’re elevating them to be synonymous with culture, even though it’s impossible for any species to have a monoculture. We’re monolithising a (fictional alien) species.
By the way, Grizzly bear and Kodiak bear aren’t species either. They’re both brown bears (ursos arctos).
Well fuck me. I’m dumber than I thought.
Canis lupus familiaris, actually. Domestic dogs and grey wolves are the same species (canis lupus), but dogs are a distinct subspecies (familiaris).
