German basically always uses an article, including when English wouldn't.
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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how else would you know if capital is a boy, girl, or neuter?
because "The Capital" means one distinguished type of Capital in English but it doesn't carry that meaning in German. Capital is the correct translation.
Marx wrote it in german and called it that
Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Napoleon von Karl Marx
smh, all those non german speakers throwing around theories. As a native german speaker I can tell you the real reason:
... it just would sound weird without it. 🤷
I prefer to just call it "Das".
I agree we should say Capital in English as that is just the translation. Calling it Das Kapital isn't incorrect though as that is the original title... I think any menace you interpret from the original title is from your own personal biases (or those around you/culture). The words are German and Germans are the bad guys in a bunch of US-centric movies. Plus like 150 years and a really strong 80 years of "Das Kapital is the commie Bible!" or whatever type shit. That's all additional cultural and personal bias though. It doesn't change the title of the book and anyone "in the know" knows Capital = Das Kapital.
Anyway, I can read French and a decent amount of Spanish. All I can say about the article "das" is it's very likely just one of those quirks of language. Maybe a native German speaker can say further, but there's just a lot of things in languages that can be translated directly, but don't make sense to be translated, so those doing the translations modify descriptions, wording, etc. to more fully and correctly capture the original meaning. Calling the book "The Capital" wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but we tend to care less about articles in English than some other languages. Even within different English dialects some speakers drop articles. One that sticks out to me all the time is British speakers will say "I went to hospital." Americans will say "I went to THE hospital" (or the indefinite article "a hospital"). Not an article, but Brits don't usually say "Back at my (or the) university" they just say "back at uni(versity)."
It's just a style thing ultimately, I think. Marx wasn't writing about the capital of his friend. He wasn't writing about capital within a single nation. He was writing about Capital with a capital (goddamnit) C. The big daddy Capital. The entire concept of circulation, commodities, trade, the history of money, labor, ownership. In that sense, The Capital sort of makes sense, but still just an awkward title I suppose
German and English treat abstract nouns somewhat differently. In the singular, German attaches the definite article to certain kinds of abstraction, while English does not: e.g., Die Liebe versagt nie (Love never fails). Yet one can also say, Kinder brauchen Liebe (Children need love). In other words, the German employs the article when naming a unique abstract quality (die Liebe) and omits it when labeling an individualized quality or entity whose form or quantity is of importance (Liebe). Put another way, die Liebe refers to the absolute category of love, while Liebe designates a specific kind of love. The English structure does not mark this differentiation.
From here
Ancient Greek also uses the article for abstract nouns, and also for proper names. The wisdom; the Socrates.
It's "El Capital" in Spanish too. "Capital" by itself sounds weird and I imagine it's the same case in German.
Whenever I see “Das” I read it in an American game show host voice. “That’s Capital!”
"Das Kapital" is like "The concept of capital", articles are required for every noun and dont carry more meaning. In english the difference between talking about the concept of something and a realization of the concept is signified by the ommision or usage of the article. In german nouns need articles always.
Yeah, all the real heads call it "Capital," and Germans do love to put articles in front of every noun.
Wiederholen sie auf Deutsch, bitte.
It's called "The Capital" in other languages, "Kapitalet" in Swedish. Capital would just be "Kapital".
I think languages that don't really go article crazy like the Germans just call it Capital. In Japanese, it's 資本論. It's probably something similar in Chinese.
Chinese doesn't really have definite articles
Because das ist gut
It's how German works - when you have a noun by itself (i.e. not part of a sentence), it goes with the article by default.