Capital letters and German nouns

Hulalessar

Hulalessar

Senior Member
Andalucía
English - England
In the English speaking world children typically master the basic rules of orthography before learning about nouns, verbs and other parts of speech. The rules of German orthography require nouns to begin with a capital letter. Does that mean that children in the German speaking world are taught about nouns earlier so that they know which words need a capital letter or do they sort of just pick it up?
 
    • If I remember correctly it wasn't explicity taught in the first class to capitalize nouns.

    We simply learnt how to write "mom", "dad", "grandma" and so on without knowing why they start with a capital letter. You just had to remember capitalisation like you had to remember which letter to use. But I can ask a primary school teacher how it's done today.
     
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    Maybe not in first class but got taught the basic word classes like "Hauptwort" and "Tuwort" quite early in elementary school. In secondary school they then taught me the Latin terms "Substantiv" (or nowadays they say "Nomen":eek:) and "Verb".
     
    OBrasilo said:
    Nomen makes sense, it's from latin nomen substantivum, as opposed to nomen adjectivum, ie. adjectives.
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    Exactly that's why it does not make sense. Nomen is an umbrella term for Substantiv and Adjektiv and not a synonym for Substantiv.
     
    berndf said:
    Exactly that's why it does not make sense. Nomen is an umbrella term for Substantiv and Adjektiv and not a synonym for Substantiv.
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    Yes. Unlike English with its "nouns" (which predictably create a lot of terminological issues), Russian, for a comparison, quite consistently calques nomina in general, (nomina) substantiva and (nomina) adiectiva. Having a separate umbrella term is quite convenient for more archaic IE languages like Russian and even German, as nouns and adjectives have many similarities in their morphosyntax.
     
    I am not sure but is it not possible that other languages had more than proper names capitalized?
    See this in Wikipedia: "(...) printing began to favor more and more capitalization of nouns following German typography. The first lines of the U.S. Constitution of 1787 show major capitalization of most nouns:

    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.[3]"
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    But that is based on German influence. not what I was looking for.
     
    ThomasK said:
    But that is based on German influence. not what I was looking for.
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    German is one of last language that uses capitalisation of nouns. It used to be more wide spread 18th century. But capitalisation in 18th century English never was that strict. Only some nouns are capitalised in the declaration of independence. It was more a means of emphasising a word that a grammatical marker.
     
    In
    berndf said:
    Only some nouns are capitalised in the declaration of independence. It was more a means of emphasising a word that a grammatical marker.
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    Quite so, and that was also something I thought of, or more like a sort of reverential capitalisation. I got used to that in Catholic religion and schools. We "had" God, the Trinity, the divine Godhead inspiring awe in all kinds of ways, and one way of expressing that awe due to the Godhead, was the use of the capitalisation, but not of the proper names only but also of the Bible, the Gospel, etc. And my feeling was, my hunch is, that that awe inspired quite some instnaces of capitalisation, spread over the language in sometimes uncontrolled/ uncontrollable ways. Could that be true?
     
    ThomasK said:
    In

    Quite so, and that was also something I thought of, or more like a sort of reverential capitalisation. I got used to that in Catholic religion and schools. We "had" God, the Trinity, the divine Godhead inspiring awe in all kinds of ways, and one way of expressing that awe due to the Godhead, was the use of the capitalisation, but not of the proper names only but also of the Bible, the Gospel, etc. And my feeling was, my hunch is, that that awe inspired quite some instnaces of capitalisation, spread over the language in sometimes uncontrolled/ uncontrollable ways. Could that be true?
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    Same here in Spain. Such words related to religion has been always capitalised. Even so, although the vast majority of people is not religious anymore, is still mandatory to use capitalisation when writing about that subject.
     
    But how far do the Spanish go as for using capitalization? I mean: Bible, Gospel, are not that special, if you belong to the "club" or if you want to show extra respect, but what other words are capitalized? With us that period is over, or almost: our own spelling guide suggests capitalization for the above words, but not many more as far as I know (no longer the gospel as far as I know).
     
    I like the German capitalization rules. It makes it easier to decipher meaning in sentences since word order is very different than English and the Romance languages. Sometimes words gain capitalization when they act as a noun. Beim Schafen as opposed to schafen. Abentessen... Nachmittagssschlaf
    With little kids you don't need to give rules and Latin names. You can just say you capitalize the names for people, places and things.
     
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    It reminds me of an "issue" some years ago (two decades or so). Some people felt the urge to "minimalize" God by not capitalizing the name "God". Yet, they would never have considered it with fictitious characters, or with Allah... But OK, in anger one...
     
    No, I meant all people. You don't capitalize them in English but in German yes. So if you say people, places and things to an infant you don't need to go into detail about what Nouns, Substantives are and what their function is in a sentence. Der Professor is a person, Die Frau is a person, Der Bäker...

    Angels, devils, saints and gods? In German, yes, for sure. In English too if they are personalized.
    Alongside the archangel Michael, Gabriel is described as the guardian angel of Israel, defending its people against the angels of the other nations.
    Even works of art if personalized. Michelangelos's Davide stands outside in a square in Florence, Italy.
     
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    Wiki indicates that the use of capitals for nouns was indeed more widely extended in Germanic languages in the past.

    The various languages and dialects in the High German family, including Standard German and Luxembourgish, are the only major languages using the Latin Alphabet in which all nouns are capitalized. This was also practiced in other Germanic Languages (mainly due to German influence):
    • In German and Luxembourgish, all nouns (and verbs being used as nouns) are capitalized.
    • Danish before the spelling reform of 1948
    • Swedish during the 17th and 18th centuries
    • English, during the 17th and 18th centuries (as in Gulliver's Travels, and most of the original 1787 United States Constitution)
    • Some regional languages, such as Frisian
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    I think German speaking children will very quickly figure out that any word after der, die, das, den, dem, des, (k)ein, (k)eine, (k)einen, (k)einem and (k)eines will get a capital letter.
    berndf said:
    Maybe not in first class but got taught the basic word classes like "Hauptwort" and "Tuwort" quite early in elementary school. In secondary school they then taught me the Latin terms "Substantiv" (or nowadays they say "Nomen":eek:) and "Verb".
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    In Flanders too, we say "doewoord" (do word) in elementary school and only start saying "werkwoord" (work word / verb) starting the age of 12. I don't remember learning about "zelfstanding naamwoorden" (nouns), "bijvoegelijke naamwoorden" (adjectives) and "bijwoorden" (adverbs) at a young age, only verbs. Probably because verbs are declined in Dutch. Adjectives are declined slightly but the rules are never taught to us.

    EDIT: We learned about nouns, adjectives and adverbs at the age of 9, probably to prepare for French class (which starts at the age of 10).
     
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