German nouns are capitalized. Very disappointed to see nouns in the vocabulary list starting with small letters. Very confusing and just plain wrong!
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Thanks for reporting this, we will look into changing it.
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There’s a difficulty with this as some words can be nouns or verbs…schwimmen (verb, to swim), das Schwimmen (noun, the swimming). Probably some mixing of other word types with nouns as well that I’m not thinking of good examples, but it happens all the time. Perhaps what would be nice at the very least is if I click on what is clearly a noun in the content, that it brings up the word with the same capitalization. My memory is fuzzy but I kind of think version 4 did this??
As for the vocabulary list, perhaps both could be shown…at least if the LingQ understands the word to be both noun and verb, or noun only, or verb only, or adjective, etc.
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Hi LingQ Team @nsprung ,
I came across this issue in a discussion from over two years ago, and as a new subscriber, I was extremely disappointed to encounter it after signing up. What makes this even more frustrating is that it remains unresolved after all this time.
It is unacceptable that your software still does not correctly handle German noun capitalisation — a fundamental language rule. Please prioritise fixing this issue as soon as possible. A delay of more than two years is simply not reasonable.
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Hi Team LingQ,
I have just found another post from 2013 (LingQ in the German part - nouns). Please prioritise fixing this issue as soon as possible. This is simply unacceptable.
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@abengt This problem was actually solved a while ago and capitalized words saved in the Vocabulary remain capitalized.
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Hi @zoran,
Thank you for your reply. However, that does not seem to be the case for me. I have saved numerous capitalised words from the materials, but they automatically changed to lowercase, and there does not appear to be any way to edit them. Only a handful of words remain capitalised.
Is there a way for the LingQ team to address this issue at a fundamental level? I would appreciate a clearer and more accurate explanation.
Thank you.
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@abengt Can you please provide an example of a word you saved in a lesson as capitalized and it appear in lowercase in the Vocabulary? That would help. Thanks!
Hi @Zoran,
Thank you for your response. Here are a few examples of the issue:
- am Stadtrand became am stadtrand
- Forschungseinrichtung became forschungseinrichtung
- infiziert er sich selbst immer wieder mit Tropenkrankheiten became infiziert er sich selbst immer wieder mit tropenkrankheiten
- UNO became Uno (the first letter of this one somehow mains capitalised but the others are converted into lowercase)
In addition to words saved from lessons, I have also noticed that nouns I manually added to my vocabulary list (not from lessons) are also being converted to lowercase. For example:
- Abschlusszeugnis became abschlusszeugnis
- Geburtsurkunde became geburtsurkunde
- der Schaulustiger became der schaulustiger
What is even more frustrating is that some lowercase words are being capitalised incorrectly:
- einhalten became Einhalten
- schwingen became Schwingen
- durch became Durch
- ständigen became Ständigen
- warnt became Warnt
- forschen became Forschen
- auslösen became Auslösen
- nennt became Nennt
This is a really frustrating UX issue, and I would greatly appreciate support from you or the LingQ team to resolve it.
Thank you!
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Thanks! We will look into this.
It is not that simple. To make it even more complicated:
Schwingen is a word that has different meanings. As a noun and capatilized it means the wings of a bird. Also it can be a verb with the meaning swing.
Also a verb in its basic form can be made into a noun and then it would also be capitalized. That could happen to “Einhalten”, “Schwingen”, “Forschen” and “Auslösen”.
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Hi @zoran . I believe it has been solved partially. When you check the general Vocabulary tab in the app, it shows properly. When you check the vocabulary inside the lessons it is partially good. The tabs show properly the words that have been already converted into LingQs or learnt, but all the words on “New Words” are in lowercase. I understand the technical difficulties of this topic, but I have to agree with others that this is simply incorrect from a German point of view. You can for no reason write a noun in lowercase. I hope this will be solved.
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Hi there, I signed in today to learn German and ran into the same issue. It is especially annoying, when a word, which is not noun, becomes capitalized. Sometimes it might be understandable, but why here:
Eifrig leckte er Georges Fuß - becomes “Leckte”.
Letztens wolltest du Eier kochen. → Wolltest
hatte eben einen Brief gelesen → Eben
noch gar nicht sein Fressen bekommen → Gar
hat eben nicht daran gedacht → Gedacht
redete sich George heraus → Heraus
Ich wollte die Uhr holen → Holen
jetzt wieder angestellt? → Jetzt
Ihre Mutter lächelte → Lächelte
Die Tante nickte - > Nickte
Sie reichte ihn nun → Nun
Sie reichte ihn → Reichte
…rief Onkel → Rief
sagte die Mutter seufzend → Seufzend
die Eier steinhart waren → Steinhart
…stöhnte Tante → Stöhnte
bei uns verbringen werden → Verbringen
wissenschaftliche Arbeit → Wissenschaftliche
wolltest du Eier kochen → Wolltest
That means, it is 19 wrong capitalization out of 72 lingQs I created = 26% saved lingQs are wrong and I cannot correct it. Not counting “wohl → Wohl” and “wolle → Wolle” (as Wohl and Wolle might be nouns).
Please please, have a look into this, thank you
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@Dorban1 Thanks, we will do our best to make improvements.
Zoran,
I’m seriously floored by this. This is a language site - a site that sells language learning!
And yet, the capitalisation issue in German is still ongoing. Verbs and adjectives are being capitalised incorrectly, while nouns aren’t capitalised as they should!
How is this still happening?!
I see that you mentioned this was “fixed” sometime back, but it seems worse than ever now. And just a few hours ago, you simply responded: “Thanks, we will do our best to make improvements.”
Are we seriously expected to accept that this “improvement” has been on the back burner for so long? This is a fundamental error that affects every learner using this platform. It’s not a small oversight—it’s a major flaw in teaching German. How is something so basic still being ignored?
How can learners trust the rest of the content when such a glaring issue remains unresolved for so long? At this point, it’s hard to take the “we’re working on it” response seriously.
This really needs to be addressed - now!
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Well, if it’s the first word in the sentence it is capitalized.
@Maria2 We are looking into this.
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What kind of sentence starts with a verb in its base form?
“Einhalten die Regeln du musst, junger Padawan” 
@Maria2 Congrats, you just received an update from “we’re working on it” to “we are looking into this”. If you are patient enough the you are sure to receive the gold badge: “not an issue”
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In German, the base form of the verb (typically ending -en) is also the form used for what I believe is called the Gerund (not super sure about Grammar terms like these).
This means it is in fact quite common when talking about activities in the same way one could say things in English like
- Running can be very tiring.
- Listening to music is a big hobby of mine.
- Driving all the way to the South of France was a bit too much for me to do alone.
All these could start with what is morphologically the same as the infinitive in German (allthough you wouldn’t say these last two sentences this way).
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This is indeed called Gerundium. That beeing said we don’t really have this in German, though, and nouns derived from verbs are just threatened like a noun, including it beeing with a capital letter. So whether or not it appears at the beginning of the sentence doesn’t matter.
My point was that I can’t think of a sentence starting with a verb at the beginning in its infinite form.