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I just watched a youtube video. At 0:27, he says:

So, hast du schon irgendwas sehr Peinliches gemacht, wo du.....

My question is: why do we have to start "peinlich" with a capital letter? It is an adjective here. Also, why it ends with -s? Is it because of adjective ending?

Dennis
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    One could (just barely) parse "Hast du schon irgendetwas peinlich gemacht?", namely either with peinlich used adverbially ("Have you done anthing in an awkward way?") or denoting the result of "machen" ("Is there anything that you made awkward (=turned into a state of being an awkward thing)?"); here, the weird construction "etwas peinlich machen" would be parallel to "Holz klein hacken", "Draht krumm biegen", "die Flasche leer trinken". But neither of these two interpretations would make sense. – Hagen von Eitzen Feb 26 '19 at 19:16

1 Answers1

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What you see here is what is called Substantivierung - An adjective is elevated to a noun (dt: Substantiv)

das Peinliche

("the embarrassing") is used as a noun in the sentence (after all, it is the object of the sentence) and thus has to be capitalised.

The -s suffix is used in your example because of the "etwas" which enforces mixed declension.

GrottenOlm
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tofro
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    @Dennis: Please not that even when using an adjective as adjective (and not as substantive) the endings of the adjective may change: The endings change in the case that the adjectives are describing a substantive (but without using the verb "sein"). Example: "Die Kleider sind peinlich." (use of the verb "sein"), but: "Er hat die peinlichen* Kleider angezogen.*" – Martin Rosenau Feb 26 '19 at 06:59
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    But note that no capitalization takes place when there is an implied substantive, e.g.: Ich habe das hübsche Kleid angezogen, das peinliche habe ich zu Hause gelassen. – RHa Feb 26 '19 at 07:57
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    @rha I was already afraid that my answer had too much information for the level of the question... – tofro Feb 26 '19 at 07:59
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    That's interesting. In English, I believe one would typically analyze the corresponding phrase "anything very embarrassing" as a noun phrase with "anything" as the head and "very embarrassing" as an adjective phrase modifying it. I assume in German it's analyzed differently? – Ilmari Karonen Feb 26 '19 at 09:41
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    @IlmariKaronen Well, you could get rid of the "anything" - in that case, there's not much difference to German - Think about the book "The Shining", for example. – tofro Feb 26 '19 at 10:17
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    Yes, you can certainly nominalize adjectives in English, too. But one would not normally consider "embarrassing" to be nominalized in "anything (very) embarrassing". You can't remove "anything" from the OP's sentence in English, anyway: *"Have you done very embarrassing?" is not grammatical. (*"Have you done the embarrassing?" would technically be grammatical, but still not idiomatic, since "embarrassing" is not commonly nominalized like that.) Anyway, I just found the different analysis of these seemingly parallel constructions in German and English curious. – Ilmari Karonen Feb 26 '19 at 10:30
  • @IlmariKaronen Agree. But that's not so much a difference in options for nominalization, but rather the difference between usage of the pronouns anything and etwas – tofro Feb 26 '19 at 10:39
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    Just to flog this moribund horse a bit more, it does seems to me that, even in German, the nominalization of adjectives after etwas, nichts, etc. is perhaps not quite the same things as the "true" nominalization in e.g. das Peinliche. If the "nominalized adjective" after etwas was really acting as a true noun, it should be possible to replace it with an actual noun, like, say, Kartoffel or Wasser. But while my German is kind of rusty, I'm pretty sure that *etwas Kartoffel is not grammatical. – Ilmari Karonen Feb 26 '19 at 11:10
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    ... Anyway, I agree that etwas Peinliches is still officially considered a nominalized form, and thus capitalized. I'm just saying that it doesn't seem to be quite the same thing as a "normal" nominalized adjective. – Ilmari Karonen Feb 26 '19 at 11:11
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    @IlmariKaronen "Nehmen Sie doch noch etwas Kaffee - Etwas Milch dazu?" is perfectly grammatical. I guess you won't object "Kaffee" and "Milch" are nouns. – tofro Feb 26 '19 at 11:45
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    A famous example: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth” is “Selig sind die Sanftmütigen; denn sie werden das Erdreich besitzen” (emphasis added) in the 2017 Lutherbibel. Here the meek corresponds to die Sanftmütigen — an adjective used as a substantive, in both languages, and getting capitalised in the German. – PLL Feb 26 '19 at 11:52
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    @tofro That's a totally different usage. Etwas Kaffee cannot be a lot of coffee, it's some coffee. Etwas Peinliches can be a whole lot of embarassing, it's something embarassing. – sgf Feb 26 '19 at 11:56
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    Since when can nouns be increased with "sehr"? – vectory Feb 26 '19 at 18:06