Nitpick: it's absolutely correct to capitalise Mandalorian as it's a territory/culture with a proper noun.
Are we Earthlings or 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.
We're just Earthlings, worms are Earthlings and earthlings.
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).
If I remember correctly Centauris also have a big holiday where they celebrate how they genocided some other race on Centauri Prime.
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.
Biomes on planets often too
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.
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.
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.
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.
I thought we were Humans from Hume.
Not Kantians from Kant?
Some people also claim they're just platonic. I don't know if Plato is a planet, though.
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
If history truly rhymes, the aliens are going to be named "hello" or whatever the humans hear them saying often, unless the aliens can visibly destroy us in a fight.
these got dam helloans stealing our jobs
Annyong
Star Trek governing bodies tend to include the founding species in their name so citizens of "The Klingon Empire" can be called "Klingons" regardless of whether or not they're actually of the klingon species. The same doesn't apply to any species like humans who are citizens of The Federation, unless you're talking about the Mirror-universe Terrans who are citizens of The Terran Empire.
They're usually named for their home world as well. Klingons are the exception in that their home world used to be Kling, and was then renamed later.
It's basically the equivalent of Earthlings.
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.
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
"Greetings, Earthlings." 👽
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.
I don't get the confusion. It's just a sign of respect, an acknowledgement that these other alien species are truly our equals. Or at the very least, equal enough that it would be disrespectful to refer to them the same way we do animals.
For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.
Here are some OCR tools to assist you in transcribing posts:
FOSS Android Recs per u/m_f@discuss.online: 1 , 2
Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
