Hi Barry,
On 3/30/16, 10:59, "ietf on behalf of Barry Leiba"
<ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org on behalf of
barryleiba(_at_)computer(_dot_)org> wrote:
[...]
As a complete side thing, I wonder how this all seems to
German-speakers, as German uses initial caps for all nouns. I wonder
if anyone even notices if someone fails to do that. I wonder if it
becomes puzzling, perhaps in some instances.
German native speaker here.
Indeed, in German the first letter of a noun is capitalized, and indeed there
are a very few examples where a noun and a (non-capitalized but otherwise
spelled identically) non-noun have meanings that are not intuitively
distinguishable. One example is the plural noun “Spinnen” (spiders), and the
verb “spinnen” (to spin/yarn and also to be bonkers :-)
There may even be a handful of cases (in all books of a sizable library) where
that situation could lead to confusion when considering the context. That
would typically be slang language. However, the amount of confusion is
probably less than it would be in English, given the examples some folks
provided here.
Except for acronyms, all-caps is a no-no in German, even for things like last
names.
Stephan