Editing German language (section)

===Noun inflection===
[[German nouns]] inflect into:
* one of four [[Grammatical case|cases]]: [[nominative]], [[genitive]], [[dative case|dative]], and [[accusative case|accusative]].
* one of three [[grammatical gender|genders]]: masculine, feminine, or neuter. Word endings sometimes reveal grammatical gender; for instance, nouns ending in ''...ung'' (ing), ''...schaft'' (-ship), ''...keit'' or ''...heit'' (-hood) are feminine, while nouns ending in ''...chen'' or ''...lein'' ([[diminutive]] forms) are neuter and nouns ending in ''...ismus'' ([[-ism]]) are masculine. Others are controversial, sometimes depending on the region in which it is spoken. Additionally, ambiguous endings exist, such as ''...er'' ([[agent noun|-er]]), e.g. ''Feier (feminine)'', Eng. ''celebration, party'', ''Arbeiter (masculine)'', Eng. labourer, and ''Gewitter (neuter)'', Eng. thunderstorm.
* two numbers: singular and plural

Although German is usually cited as an outstanding example of a highly inflected language, the degree of inflection is considerably less than in [[Old German]] or in other old [[Indo-European languages]] such as [[Latin]], [[Ancient Greek]], or [[Sanskrit]], or, for instance, in modern [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]] or [[Russian language|Russian]]. The three genders have collapsed in the plural, which now behaves, grammatically, somewhat as a fourth gender. With four cases and three genders plus plural there are 16 distinct possible combinations of case and gender/number, but presently there are only six forms of the [[article (grammar)|definite article]] used for the 16 possibilities. Inflection for case on the noun itself is required in the singular for strong masculine and neuter nouns in the genitive and sometimes in the dative. Both of these cases are losing way to substitutes in [[Natural language|informal speech]]. The dative ending is considered somewhat old-fashioned in many contexts and often dropped, but it is still used in sayings and in formal speech or in written language. Weak masculine nouns share a common case ending for genitive, dative and accusative in the singular. Feminines are not declined in the singular. The plural does have an inflection for the dative. In total, seven inflectional endings (not counting plural markers) exist in German: ''-s, -es, -n, -ns, -en, -ens, -e''.

In the German orthography, nouns and most words with the syntactical function of nouns are capitalised, which is supposed to make it easier for readers to find out what function a word has within the sentence (''Am Freitag ging ich einkaufen.'' — "On Friday I went shopping."; ''Eines Tages kreuzte er endlich auf.'' — "One day he finally showed up.") This convention is almost unique to German today (shared perhaps only by the closely related [[Luxemburgish language]] and several insular dialects of the [[North Frisian language]]), although it was historically common in other languages such as Danish and English.

Like most Germanic languages, German forms noun [[compound (linguistics)|compounds]] where the first noun modifies the category given by the second, for example: ''Hundehütte'' (Eng. ''dog hut''; specifically: ''doghouse''). Unlike English, where newer compounds or combinations of longer nouns are often written in ''open'' form with separating spaces, German (like the other German languages) nearly always uses the ''closed'' form without spaces, for example: Baumhaus (Eng. ''tree house''). Like English, German allows arbitrarily long compounds, but these are rare. (''See also'' [[English compounds]].)

The longest German word verified to be actually in (albeit very limited) use is [[Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz|Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz]], which, literally translated, is "beef labelling supervision duty assignment law" [from Rind (cattle), Fleisch (meat), Etikettierung(s) (labelling), Überwachung(s) (supervision), Aufgaben (duties), Übertragung(s) (assignment), Gesetz (law)].