I’ve noticed that many people tend to capitalize words like katana, tonfa & nunchaku. It happens all the time when people are writting my written exams. They never capitalize sword, knife or club.
Is there a deep psychological reason why? I’m guessing it has something to do with it being a foreign language, but anybody know exactly what causes that behaviour.
No, they don’t need to. Its a perfectly anglicized word. There’s no need to italicize or capitalize it, any more than you would for data, schadenfreude, or sushi.
I’ll accept that but where is the cutoff for words from a non-latin alphabet? Kantana isn’t exactly an everyday word as is sushi and data. I think the same is true of schadenfreude.
There is no bright line. But I won’t italicize any word (well, I would italicize any word cause it was foreign unless I was writing formally, anyway) if my listeners should know what it is. I’d say that enough samurai movies have been shown that people know what it is.