Noun compounds are written together with no spacing (for example, the German word for 'spy satellite' is 'Spionagesatellit'). Under the influence of German, the Scandinavian languages formerly capitalized their nouns Danish retained the habit until 1948.
Only a handful of other languages capitalize their nouns, mainly regional languages with orthographic conventions inspired by German, such as Low German and Saterland Frisian. Other High German languages, such as Luxembourgish, also capitalize both proper and common nouns. German is unusual among languages using the Latin alphabet in that all nouns are capitalized (for example, 'the book' is always written as 'das Buch'). German has four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.
German nouns are declined (change form) depending on their grammatical case (their function in a sentence) and whether they are singular or plural. Words for objects without obvious masculine or feminine characteristics like 'bridge' or 'rock' can be masculine or feminine. As in many related Indo-European languages, German nouns possess a grammatical gender the three genders are masculine, feminine, and neuter. The nouns of the German language have several properties, some unique.
