German is a special language

 

Changing the upper case in 'Speisen' to lower case even changes the meaning of the preceding word in 'Warme speisen im Keller'. How subtle can you get? In fact, it is so subtle that it took me a while to dimly remember that 'Warme' was a slang word during my youth for homosexuals, a breed of men then never spoken of and certainly never seen.

 

An Austrian friend whom we befriended during his time in Australia many years ago, wrote to say that he had shaved a few milliseconds off his texting time by not capitalising German words. I hope it won't get you into trouble, Rob!

While capital letters in the English language are primarily used to mark the start of a sentence, the pronoun "I", proper nouns (specific names of people, places, organizations, and sometimes things), and the names of days, months, holidays, nationalities, languages, and formal titles, the capitalising of German words is far more subtle.

I can think of no word in the English language where changing its first letter from lower to upper case would give it a completely different meaning. It can do so in German. It's a very special language indeed.

 

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