Beat That! All German Nouns are Capitalised and have Gender!

Although I have been reading German text for quite a while, its just recently that I have noticed that some words are always capitalized and some are not. Searching for the part of speech to which they belong, I realized that all of them are NOUNS! (Stupid me hehe). In the same instance, I have also discovered that all German nouns have gender (German like other European languages is a sexist language ) I have been trying to get formal studies with this language though but never got the time to do so.

But then I braved the challenges of my busy work schedules (graveyard huh), and started traveling to and from Manila (Quezon City) just to attend regular Saturday Extramural classes in German! "All for the love of language," as my bestfriend Roda always say. =)

Although some parts of Switzerland ("Schweiz" in German) are German-speakers, they do not employ this standard rule by which German people have constantly praticed in their ortography. Hmm...

Well, I have collected some samples in here and you may want read them below for your personal information hehe. In the words of Hyde Flippo (regular contributor of German.about.com):

German nouns (a person, place or thing, Substantive) are very easy to spot: they always begin with a CAPITAL letter! German is the only world language that capitalizes all nouns. Although there has been debate over the years about doing away with this rather inefficient practice, for now ALL German nouns must begin with a capital letter. Whether we are talking about a simple tree (ein Baum) or Deutsche Bank, any noun is capitalized in German.

The other important thing for English-speakers to understand about German nouns is the matter of gender. Just as we learned about the pronouns in the previous lesson, German nouns parallel he, she and it (er, sie, es) by also being masculine (der - DARE), feminine (die - DEE) or neuter (das - DAHSS). We can see the parallel very clearly by the ending letters for each article/pronoun: der = er, die = sie, das = es.

Der, die and das are the same as "the" in English – the DEFINITE ARTICLE. In German the definite article is much more important than it is in English. For one thing, it is used more often. In English we might say: "Nature is wonderful." In German, the article would be also be included: "Die Natur ist wunderschön." So knowing which article to use becomes even more important!

Whew! Hail to that not-so-amazing-discovery hehe. =) There are more to come as I take on the journey to the wonderful world of German language! Hmm... I am considering Russian as well in the next cycle. =)

Julius