Monday, August 1, 2011

Capitalization is WUNDERBAR


Georgetown, July 2011 [click image to enlarge].

These cheerful green buses can be found all around DC as part of Germany's "do Deutsch" campaign: it seeks to promote the joys of learning the German language and pique interest in German culture more broadly.The website promoted on the bus (www.Germany.info) has some interesting links, include a German "word of the week" blog.

The bus itself strewn with various German nouns that have entered everyday English speech. In German, all nouns should be capitalized - but things are pretty erratic here (some words are in all caps, some in lowercase). "Wunderbar" [wonderful] is an adjective, not a noun, but - strangely enough - it's capitalized. Oh those wacky Germans, being so playful with their capital letters!