The German Language is a language which uses capital letters not only at the beginning of sentences (Einglich) but also within sentences.
In English, this applies only to proper names, to the personal pronoun �I� (different from German: the pronoun ich (�I�) has no initial capital in German).
Rules
- In German, all nouns must always be written with a capital letter, regardless of whether they are at the beginning of a sentence or in the middle.
- The German personal pronoun “Sie” must be capitalized. The formal “Sie” and its related forms (“Ihnen”, “Ihr”) must be capitalized, but called for the informal, familiar forms of “you” (du, dich, ihr, euch, etc.) to be in lower case letters.
- In German, adjectives are not capitalized, even if they refer to nationality. Only exception: adjective is part of a species name, a legal, geographic or historical term; an official title, certain holidays, or common expression
- Nominalized cardinal and ordinal numbers are capitalized.
- Words ending with “-heit”,”-keit”,”-ung”, “-schaft” or”-nis” are capitalized.
Examples
| English |
German |
Rule |
| this evening |
heute Abend |
noun (Abend) |
| the American president |
der amerikanische Präsident |
noun (Präsident), adjective (amerikainische) |
| every third one |
jeder Dritte |
nominalized cardinal / ordinal numbers (Dritte) |
FURTHER INFORMATION
