In English, we only capitalize the first word of a sentence and proper nouns, like names of people or places. German is different. It capitalizes every single noun.

This might seem strange at first, but it’s incredibly helpful. It makes nouns stand out, so you can easily spot the subject or object of a sentence. Whether you're talking about a Man (Mann), a House (Haus), or Freedom (Freiheit), the first letter is always uppercase.

Here's another key feature of German nouns: each one has a grammatical gender. There are three possibilities: masculine, feminine, or neuter.

This has nothing to do with the actual gender of the object. It's a grammatical classification, like a label that's permanently attached to the word. A table isn't male or female, but the German word for table, Tisch, is masculine. A lamp, Lampe, is feminine, and a book, Buch, is neuter.

Don't try to find a logical reason for a noun's gender. There often isn't one. The best approach is to learn the gender as part of the noun itself, right from the start.

For now, just remember these two core ideas: all German nouns are capitalized, and every noun has a gender. Mastering these concepts will make everything that comes next much easier.