Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
Possibly because German nouns are always capitalized
and it is just copied that way?

While this is true today, there was a period in the 19th century when the Grimm Brothers and others stopped capitalizing all nouns and followed rules closer to those of English capitalization. You can see it in the Grimm German dictionary (sort of equivalent to the OED in size at least). It did not catch on.



alled an "epoch-making achievement in historical lexicography," the dictionary was compiled by innumerable linguists over the course of a century.

I looked it up. Amazing what one finds on Google.

----please, draw me a sheep----