Capitalization

Nouns have to be capitalized. Always.
Well... that's about it, there is not much more to tell. ;)

I'll give you some examples anyway:

"The Table is in the Kitchen.
"The Cat belongs to Tom the Butcher."
"Tom is german."

This is how you do it in German. Names and nouns are written in capital letters, adjectives are not. The German language doesn't care about nationality, so adjectives that describe it are still adjectives and will be written in lower case letters.

At German elementary schools nouns are taught as "name words" (Namenwort), because they need to be written in upper case letters, same as in English. Take special care of nominalized  words, those are verbs or adjectives which have been transformed into nouns. They have to be capitalized too and can be a bit tricky.

Another English example that uses German style orthography:

"He is so strong. His Strength is amazing."

So why are we capitalizing nouns?
It all began in the early 12th century... well... ok, it didn't. Actually I think there is no reason to do so. Some people say it's easier to read texts then and that capitalizing nouns is adding some kind of visible structure. Well... I guess English (and basically all other languages) have proven this theory wrong. Probably people have simply gotten used to it and don't want to change. Since capital letters look nice in the written language let's be happy that we have a few more opportunities to use them. Hooray to the nouns!

Well... now you have the knowledge it takes to become a real capitalist and to capitalize everything you want. Have fun with this little piece of information and feel free to leave me a comment, preferably with capitalized nouns!;)




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