I can Understand German Now!

I had to read part of a patent claim in German for work, and I succeeded! Granted, it helped that I had access to a similar version of the patent claim in English, but I needed some very precise information, and "similar" wasn't going to cut the mustard.

Here's the "similar" version of patent claim:

a load cell (30, 30', 30") which is arranged as only connection between the tiltable boom (14, 14") and the work platform (20), wherein

And here's what I needed to understand:

Luckily, I've been learning (well, more like playing, but I learn stuff, too!) Yiddish on Duolingo for about two months, so I had a surprisingly useful starting vocabulary:

• ein = one
• di/der/dem = the
• un = and, so assume und = un = and
• er = suffix that makes parts of speech agree with each other

I was also fairly confident that this section of the claim discusses a load cell, so Wagezelle is fairly clearly Wage + zelle = weigh + cell = load cell.

The WHOLE POINT however, of this post, is that a funny story Uncle Man told me years ago actually contains shockingly good advice for understanding the basics of a German text. When he was in college/grad school, Uncle Man was handed a scientific paper written in German, a German-English dictionary, and was told, "In German, nouns are capitalized." 

Until I had to translate these two little lines, I never realized how useful it is to be able to identify nouns at a glance. Armed with that information (and Google Translate), I was fairly easily able to find what I need:

Isn't that cool? (Using, of course, my definition of cool, which is "nerdy happiness-making.")