why does english have capital letters?

I'm not convinced that the reason English has capital letters is for legibility. Most alphabets don't make a distinction between miniscule and capital letters - in fact the only alphabets that do are Roman, Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian. But Hebrew, Arabic and the many alphabets of south and southeast Asia don't make the distinction.

it's ok , english is universal language !!

i suupose english has to have capital letters beacuse you can clearly distingush and interpret a sentence .during reading there is no question capitals being useful they have a hachtec job in writing. i belive capitals in english are used one for clear interpretation and clear understanding

Carolingian scribe, your post was certainly interesting, except for one thing. Why did you start by saying "English does not have capital letters"? Accurate or not, everything you posted explains why English DOES have capital letters!

In short, the reason for the use of capitals in writing English, and other languages, is a tradition with roots on aesthetics, not on linguistics. As for the accuracy of what I said, it is a good idea, for those who may be interested, to study paleography, especially the medieval scripts. I hope I could have shed some light on the matter.

Nobody has addressed Sunil Kumar's second question:

"Similarly I find the use of "the" very problematic. Why it can't be reduced to a minimum?"

That the questioner's native language is one without articles may be inferred by the fact of the question itself.

Naturally the existence of articles in a new language would seem problematic for one used to none. But keep in mind the function of the word the: it establishes definiteness in a noun phrase. (For example, "the good book" means the Bible, while "a good book" could be Harry Potter.)

In languages without definite articles, definiteness still exists. However, it is established in other ways, such as by inflecting the noun or by employing an adjective that acts on the noun. Amongst languages with definite articles, English may have the simplest system: many European languages have three or more definite articles, English only one.

So as for reducing the use of "the," it already has been reduced to a minimum. (Prior to Middle English there were three definite articles.) To eliminate it altogether would require structural changes to the language itself.

capital leters are shit they are of no use (); pls remove them

I find it funny how the person asking the question so abhors capitals and then writes "THE" in all-caps, to help distinguish the word.

As it so often goes, the answer is in the question!

Redundancy is built into writing to enable quick reading and to ease the amount of work the brain must do. To say otherwise would also be to say that graphic design is not needed. And that would be silly.

i really wish we didnt have them they're such a hassel!

I, for one, am grateful that we still benote capital letters! I hav studied other tungs that hav different alphabets and those without capital letters are harder to read. If I write steven ... I'm mean the word for voice ... She has the steven of an angel. But if I write Steven, then you kno that I mean the name Steven.

Even worse are those that don't benote vowels! They truly drive me nuts.

Written Japanese could not exist without. Chinese characters there are endless possibilities for the sound of a single syllable that otherwise would not be possible to understand for example everyone that would like to write using only hiragana would face the following problem if you see this written somewhere ひ how would you know what they mean if all of these words sound hi and only kanji sets the real meaning via pictograms and ideograms 日 火 比 陽 碑 東 飛 悲

"English does not have capital letters. The script it uses has. And the reason is tradition."

There you have it in a nutshell.

Whatever the reason we have them I am glad for them and wish we had a way to distinguish between words that appear alike but are much different in meaning and usage. For instance to quickly distinguish between the verb run and the noun Run (as in a dog run.)

Also the word that can be confusing. That that can be a problem is easily demonstrated. It is difficult to tell that that that that comes second is different from that that that comes third. And that's That.

Interesting. Reading these posts, the ones that do not use capital letters in the 'right places, and 'correct' punctuation are very, very hard to read, compared with those that don't.
Actually, as some of the posts have stated, use of initial capitals for start of sentence and proper names actually simplifies the language, as well as making it more legible, and makes it more comprehensible.
I had to read the uncapitalised and unpunctuated ones several times to understand them. Dropping capitalisation and punctuation is appropriate for informal comms such as TXT and some emails, but inappropriate in proper written language. It is sloppiness and laziness, and results in inaccuracies and errors.

The alphabet is made originally capital and lower case from triangle geometry.

I discovery the fact one years ago and the human language is only one originally
all of the world by someone(?)

"English does not have capital letters. The script it uses has. And the reason is tradition."

Interesting. A school inspector in 1947 held up a pen and asked the class what it was. They said it was a pen. He said no, it was a noun. My mother was the teacher, by the way, and relates the tale if sufficiently pressed to do so.

The word is a noun, the pen is a pen. That is why he was a school inspector, and not a teacher. Because he was an ass, in brief.

Now, as for your insight, JosephSungBin Im, I fear I am am rendered silent. I could, however, suggest you get in touch with JK Rowling who may have some ideas.

The Librarian
Ignoring the fact that both of your "sentences" are improper, which is where most of the confusion stems from, basic punctuation puts the two sentences in perspective.

Example: Using your sentence structure for proper comparison.

Helping your Uncle Jack off a horse.
helping your uncle jack, off a horse.

@Xannatos - you do realise, I hope, that it was The Librarian's joke that was "improper", not his grammar. And as he only wrote one sentence, how can "both sentences" be (I presume you mean grammatically) improper? His sentence did however include two similar "-ing" clauses, neither of which should take a comma:

In the first clause, "your Uncle Jack" is the direct object of "helping" and "off a horse" is a prepositional phrase.

in the second clause, "your uncle" is the direct object of "helping" but also the subject of the phrasal verb "jack off", which has its own direct object, "a horse"

The two parts of a phrasal verb are never separated by a comma, so I can only presume that you are blessed with such a clean mind that you didn't realise that that's what it was, in which case I'd check "jack off" in a good dictionary. The capitalisation of "helping" is neither here nor there, it's the difference between "your Uncle Jack off" and "your uncle jack off" that is crucial.

"helping your uncle jack, off a horse" is not proper English. Ever. Commas are only used to connect two independent clauses of a sentence, clauses. "Off a horse" is an incomplete clause.

If you are helping your Uncle Jack, you are helping him do something and, without the comma, it makes sense. I think that sentence is one of the most relevant expositions about the travails of English that there is. English does not clearly identify the object and subject, while some languages have suffixes or rigid syntactic order to avoid confusion. For us, capitalisation is an easy get-out.

I commend to you:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm

@aragond - I'm used to grammar lectures on this forum, but for a joke? It's not meant to be proper English. It's a play on words and is totally improper English! See my previous comment.

@aragond

You are either unfathomably stupid or you are just trolling. The latter is truer. But I'll indulge you.

Let's begin with your errors:

1. Commas are used more the connecting clauses.
2. Commas are not to connect two independent clauses, unless, of course, there is a coordinating conjunctions.
3. "Off a horse" is a prepositional phrase, not a clause.
4. English does clear define the subject and object.
5. English, I believe, does have a rigid syntactic order.

*"the" should be "than"

what will be lost if the english script had only the lower case?

CAPITAL LETTERS ALONE WILL MAKE HANDWRITING DIFFICULT, THOUGH IN TYPING IT WOULD MAKE NO DIFFERENCE.

Search 'Your strawman' and you'll know why CAPITAL LETTERS exist

It's spelled 'minuscule'. With a U.

I think that capital letters are helpful for English reading but makes it harder to learn.