Spelling Foreign Words and Anglicisms

Modern German is full of English: das Meeting, der Laptop, die App, downloaden. These borrowings keep their English shape, but the moment they enter German they must obey German rules — and the rule English speakers forget most consistently is capitalization. Every borrowed noun is capitalized in German, exactly like a native one, even though it still looks English. Beyond capitalization, loanwords raise questions of plural, gender, germanized spelling, and how to conjugate English verbs. This page sorts them out.

Every borrowed noun is capitalized

German capitalizes all nouns, native or foreign, full stop. So computer, meeting, internet, and smartphone — all lowercase in English — are written Computer, Meeting, Internet, Smartphone in German. The English origin changes nothing.

The same goes for -ing nouns, which English speakers especially tend to lowercase:

Borrowed nouns also need a gender, which is not always predictable: das Meeting, das Update, die App, der Account, das Handy (a pseudo-anglicism — German for "mobile phone," which English does not actually call a "handy"). Gender often follows the nearest German equivalent (die App ← die Applikation/die Anwendung), but you should learn it with the word.

The -s plural and the y→ys rule

Many English (and French) borrowings take the -s plural, which is otherwise a minor pattern in German. das Baby → die Babys, die Party → die Partys, der Job → die Jobs, das Team → die Teams.

The crucial spelling point: words ending in -y keep the y and simply add -s — they do not change to -ies as in English. So it is Babys, not "Babies"; Partys, not "Parties"; Hobbys, not "Hobbies."

Germanized spellings: variants the reform encouraged

For older, well-integrated loanwords, German has progressively germanized the spelling, often turning Greek ph into f and th into t. Many of these now exist as accepted variants, with the germanized form usually preferred or at least equally valid.

A few are now fixed (Telefon only; nobody writes Telephon anymore), while others remain genuinely optional. For the wholly germanized ones, pick the modern form unless you are quoting an older text.

Conjugating borrowed verbs

English verbs that enter German receive full German conjugation: they take German endings in the present, form a German participle in ge-…-t, and — if they began life as English phrasal verbs — often behave as separable verbs.

downloaden is the famous battleground. Both of these patterns are in use:

• treated as one word: ich downloade, participle gedownloadet;
• or, more idiomatically, calqued into German as herunterladen: ich lade herunter, participle heruntergeladen.

Other borrowed verbs settle their participle by ear, and usage has converged on these forms:

A note on E-Mail and other uncertain spellings

Some anglicisms are still settling. E-Mail (with capital E and a hyphen) is the recommended spelling, though you will see Email and Mail in casual use; note that das Email with a different meaning ("enamel") also exists, so the hyphen helps. Capitalization of the whole word remains constant because it is a noun: die E-Mail.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Every borrowed noun is capitalized in German — das Internet, der Laptop, die E-Mail, das Timing — no matter how English it looks.
• Borrowed nouns take a German gender (das Meeting, die App, der Account) and frequently the -s plural; words in -y keep the y (Babys, Partys, Hobbys), never -ies.
• Well-integrated loanwords have germanized variants: Foto/Photo, Delfin/Delphin, Tunfisch/Thunfisch, Majonäse/Mayonnaise; prefer the modern f/t-spelling.
• Borrowed verbs take German conjugation and participles (gemanagt, gestylt, gedownloadet), and German often offers a cleaner native calque (heruntergeladen for downloaden).