{"id":68081,"date":"2025-01-22T09:47:18","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=68081"},"modified":"2025-01-23T07:22:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T12:22:02","slug":"just-in-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=68081","title":{"rendered":"Just in case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Variety<\/em> told us a few days ago that Bad Bunny<\/a>'s new album made it to first place on the Billboard 200 — \"Bad Bunny Beats Taylor Swift in Extremely Tight Race to No. 1 on Albums Chart<\/a>\". In other coverage, Pitchfork<\/em>'s review<\/a> leads with the assertion that \"Bad Bunny synthesizes the past and present sound of Puerto Rico for an anthemic, cross-generational album\", and connects the music to the island's social and political history.<\/p>\n

My focus this morning is on the album's non-standard capitalization (\"DeB\u00cd TiRAR M\u00e1S FOToS\" = \" I should have taken more photos\"). We can start with a difference in editorial choices: Pitchfork<\/em> follows the album's use of upper and lower case letters in its title, while Variety<\/em> standardizes the spelling (\u201cDeb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos\u201d). The English translation in either case is of course the same, \"I should have taken more photos\".<\/p>\n

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Across the current mass media coverage<\/a>, Variety's editorial standardization seems to be the most common, but there are some outlets besides Pitchfork that respect the album's orthographic choices.<\/p>\n

The album<\/a>'s non-standard capitalization choices continue through the tracklist<\/a>:<\/p>\n

NUEVAYoL
\nVOY A LLeVARTE PA PR
\nBAILE INoLVIDABLE
\nPERFuMITO NUEVO
\nWELTiTA
\nVeLD\u00c1
\nEL CL\u00faB
\nKETU TeCR\u00c9
\nBOKeTE
\nKLOuFRENS
\nTURiSTA
\nCAF\u00e9 CON RON
\nPIToRRO DE COCO
\nLO QUE LE PAS\u00d3 A HAWAii
\nEoO
\nDtMF
\nLA MuDANZA<\/p>\n

The title \"DeB\u00cd TiRAR M\u00e1S FOToS\" has ten upper-case consonants, four lower-case vowels, and three upper-case vowels, and the initialized title track \"DtMF\" has three upper-case consonants and one lower-case consonant. All the other track names employ all upper-case letters, except for exactly one lower-case vowel in each of them.<\/p>\n

There are a few discussions elsewhere<\/a> but it's striking that TikTok offers so MANY explanations for \"What Do The Lower Case Letters In Bad Bunny's new Album Mean<\/a>\" — which probably tells us something about TikTok's current cultural role, though maybe also its search algorithm (since many most of the results don't try to answer the question…).<\/p>\n

In this 1\/14\/2025 interview<\/a>, Bad Bunny is asked \"Por qu\u00e9 se titularon as\u00ed las canciones con as\u00ed may\u00fascula min\u00fascula?\" (\"Why were the songs titled that way with majuscule and minuscule letters?\"):<\/p>\n