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GrammatikGroß-/Kleinschreibung

Groß-/Kleinschreibung

Hinweis: Die Grammatikartikel sind noch neu und wir arbeiten teilweise noch daran. Zurzeit sind sie nur auf Englisch verfügbar, in circa zwei Monaten dann aber auch in Deutsch.

Russian uses capital letters far less often than English. Most words stay lowercase unless the sentence begins or you are dealing with a proper name. The sections below cover the main cases where capitalization is required.

Start of a sentence

The first word of a sentence is capitalized, same as in English.

  • - It is cold here.
  • - Why were you late?

Proper names

Names get capitalized: А́нна, Ива́н, Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Пу́шкин.

  • - Yesterday I saw Anna in the park.
  • - At school we read Pushkin.

Countries, cities, and rivers

Countries, cities, rivers etc get capitalized: Росси́я, Казахста́н, Санкт-Петербу́рг, Во́лга, Нева́.

  • - We lived in Russia for three years.
  • - Ships sail on the Volga.

Multi-word place names

For multi-word place names capitalize the first word of the name: Тверска́я у́лица, Чёрное мо́ре. If the descriptor is not part of the actual name, keep it lowercase: о́зеро Сели́гер, река́ Дон, го́род Москва́.

  • - We walked along Tverskaya Street.
  • - Lake Seliger is well known among fishermen.

That is essentially the full list: only these patterns call for capitals in this sense. So in contrast to English the following are not capitalized:

Languages ❌

Languages are not capitalized: англи́йский язы́к, неме́цкий язы́к.

  • - Tanya is studying Russian.
  • - My brother speaks English.

Months and weekdays ❌

Month names and weekday names are lowercase: янва́рь (January), понеде́льник (Monday).

  • - The meeting will be on Monday.
  • - My parents arrived in January.

This grammar

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Exercises

We have 17 exercises for this topic.

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