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All German nouns are capitalized. [1] German is the only major language to capitalize its nouns. This was also done in the Danish language until 1948 and sometimes in (New) Latin, while Early Modern English showed tendencies towards noun capitalization. [citation needed] [a] Capitalization is not restricted to nouns.
The grammar of the German language is quite similar to that of the other Germanic languages.Although some features of German grammar, such as the formation of some of the verb forms, resemble those of English, German grammar differs from that of English in that it has, among other things, cases and gender in nouns and a strict verb-second word order in main clauses.
German words which come from Latin words with c before e, i, y, ae, oe are usually pronounced with (/ts/) and spelled with z. The letter q in German only ever appears in the sequence qu (/kv/), with the exception of loanwords, e.g., Coq au vin or Qigong (which is also written Chigong). The letter x (Ix, /ɪks/) occurs almost exclusively in ...
Unlike English, the German language distinguishes adverbs which qualify verbs or adjectives from those which qualify whole sentences. For the latter case, many German adjectives form a special adverb form ending in -erweise, e.g. glücklicherweise "luckily", traurigerweise "sadly" (from Weise = way, manner).
Old High German is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five grammatical cases in Old High German.
The attributive superlative form adds the "st" to the comparative root and then the conventional adjective ending. das schönste Lied. This form can also be placed in a predicate position with the appropriate adjective ending: Dieses Haus ist das schönste. ("This house is the most beautiful.")
All German nouns are included in one of three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine or neuter. While the gender often does not directly influence the plural forms of nouns, [1] [2] there are exceptions, particularly when it comes to people and professions (e.g. Ärzte/Ärztinnen).
Adjectives, determiners and pronouns agreed with the noun they qualified in case, number, and gender, although without a separate vocative form. Their inflection stemmed from the PIE "pronominal inflection", which is used most prominently by the demonstrative pronoun in other Indo-European languages.