Why is "I" capitalized, but not "me" or"my"?

Apologies if this has been asked before, but all the keywords are less than three letters. Why is the word “I” capitalized in English, but no other personal pronouns are?

I’d say because a lowercase letter is more likely to be sounded out while a single upper case letter is more likely to cause someone to say the name of the letter. so that people don’t read “i went to the store” as “iiii went to the store” but as “eye went to the store”

that is so just a guess however

WAG 1: “I” comes quite often at the beginning of sentences, so it is more often than not capitalized. Then, when it was used later in the sentence it looked weird as just “i”. So the rule that “I” be always capitalized came to be.

WAG 2: “I” is treated as a proper noun (proper pronoun?), because it indicates a specific person.

http://www.alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwhyisi.html

I can’t really follow their explanation too well, but it has something to do with making “I” a distinctive word to avoid misunderstandings.

While"my" refers to something other than me being in a state of belonging to me, the word “me” could be regarded as a proper pronoun since it also refers to a specific person. “Me” still isn’t normally capitalized though, go figure.

In Lithuanian, the word for I is not capitalised unless at the beginning of a sentence but you, both singular and plural are capitalised when addressing a specific person (unless you wish to demean him/her slightly). An indefinite you may or may not be capitalised, also depending on whether you wish to show respect.
By the same token, I is usually written first in any pair, thus ‘I and you’ not ‘you and I’ like in English

The singular pronoun “I” is capitalized because that is the rule.

Come on people… this is English we’re talking about. You don’t have to understand why the rule exists; you simply have to follow it.

http://www.alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxwhyisi.html

there you go.
Hope this is satisfying enough.

Arturas’ explanation mostly holds for German, as well. The capitalized “you” is written capitalized when whatever you’re writing is addressing the person reading (such as a letter); otherwise it’s lower-case. “Hast du das gesehen?” asked Bobby? Or: “Lieber Bobby, hast Du das gesehen?” It’s been a while since I’ve done anything German – the participle could be “gesieht” or something (sorry if I’m wrong).

I pron. 1137 i; later I (about 1250, in The Story of Genesis and Exodus);”

That’s how the article in the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology begins. Barnhart is saying that this pronoun first appeared as a single letter in Middle English in the year 1137, when it was lowercase. Its first appearance as uppercase was in the year 1250. Barnhart goes on to explain the background of how it got to be that way:

"developed from the unstressed form of Old English (about 725) ic singular pronoun of the first person (nominative case). Modern and Middle English I developed from earlier i in the stressed position. I came to be written as a capital letter thereby making it a distinct word and avoiding misreading handwritten manuscripts. In the northern and midland dialects of England the capitalized form I appeared about 1250. In the south of England, where Old English ic early shifted in pronunciation to itch (by palatalization), the form I did not become established until the 1700s (although it appears sporadically before that time).
“Old English ic corresponds to Old Frisian, Middle Dutch, and modern Dutch ik, Old High German ih (modern German ich), Old Icelandic ek (Danish jeg, Norwegian eg/jeg, Swedish jag), and Gothic ik, from Proto-Germanic *ekan; and outside Germanic to Latin ego I, Greek egó, Old Prussian es, Old Slavic azu, Armenian es, Avestan azem, Old Persian adam, Sanskrit ahám, Tocharian ñuk, and Hittite uk, from Indo-European *egom, egô.”

Taking it even further back from Proto-Indo-European, Vitaly Shevoroshkin has compared first-person pronouns from languages around the world and hypothesized a Proto-World form, which not only provided this pronoun in Indo-European but in many other languages as well. The hypothetical Proto-World form is *nga.

Compare Tibetan nga, Burmese nga, Cantonese ngo, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *nga (Ancient Chinese nga has become wo in modern Mandarin Chinese). Basically, there’s a nasal consonant like n combined with a velar like g or k. Only the velar g remained in Indo-European *egom.

Compare from Afro-Asiatic, Egyptian ’ink, Hebrew anoki, Berber nekk or nki, Somali anigu; only the nasal n remained in Arabic ana, Aramaic ena, Amharic ené. However, compare Albanian unë.

Other examples include Sumerian nga, Zulu ngi-, Nivkh ni, Basque ni-k, Proto-Austronesian *aku (Malay aku, Javanese aku, Tagalog ako, Pohnpei ngehi, Maori ahau.
In Austro-Asiatic, compare Mundari aing, Ho nga, Senoi eng, Khmer yïng.
Nga- is the first-person pronoun all across the Australian Aboriginal languages; there’s Rembarrngah nga-, ngi-, Warlpiri ngaju, and ngayu in many other Aboriginal languages.
In the Americas, compare Yupik Eskimo uwanga, Algonquian ni, Miskito yang, etc., etc…

Alright, I’ll buy that explanation. But now explain why the article “a” isn’t capitalized, except as the first word of a sentence. :smiley:

Do note that “I” is not always captalized, as a matter of fact, it has several non capitalized uses, if you look for it in Websters. Interesting enough, the plural of ‘i’ is, ‘is’, according to Webby.

i is uncapitalized only if your name is 1. archy the cockroach 2. e.e. cummings. at least that was true when i was in school.

Or 3. Ziggy.