The question ‘Why are German Nouns Capitalized?’ is common on German learners’ minds. This is why I decided to look into the matter.
Most people just answer this question by saying: ‘’It’s German grammar, that’s just how it is.’’ I don’t like that answer. That just makes me want to know even more, so, I did some more digging…
I assume that you know that German has different cases? These cases help to formulate the meaning of the sentence, but this is not what this post is about, is it? If you want to know more about that, go check out my post on cases or the reasons for them.
As discussed cases are quite important in German and is necessary to give the correct meaning through. Cases can be quite hard to work with, and that is why the theory is that the capitals help with that. Cases are built on nouns, so, if you can identify the nouns in a sentence easily by seeing capital letters, the process to assign cases are made easier.
German is the only language that uses this technique and I like that German is different than other languages. Unique is best!
Let me know if you have other theories on this subject.
xoxo,
Charlé
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