Shouldn’t “Acht” be capitalized here?
It’s being used here as a separable verb: “achtgeben”, so no, “acht” should not be capitalized here.
That being said, it seems that it can also be used as verb+noun, like literally “pay attention”, and in that case, “Acht” should be capitalized. Source: achtgeben – Schreibung, Definition, Bedeutung, Synonyme, Beispiele | DWDS
We’d need a native speaker to explain the fine difference between using it as a separable verb (“achtgeben”) versus using it as the verb “geben” plus the noun “Acht”. I suspect it means pretty close to the same thing.
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To my ears there is absolutely no difference between “achtgeben” and “Acht geben”.
Once the verb is separated, it does not matter much whether you view it as two words or as a separated verb - apart from capitalisation.
There might be examples where it matters, but none come to mind right now, and it certainly does not matter here. And I think it’s because this applies to all separable verbs that look like verb+noun.
It’s the same with “radfahren” vs. “Rad fahren”. For that one, the separable variant has even been declared obsolete and invalid. It makes sense, because you can subsitute Rad with some other fahr-able means of transportation, such as U-Bahn, and there has never been a “u-bahnfahren” verb to begin with.
Edit: Apparently, if you google for “u-bahnfahren” you find hits, but I think this is just people applying the pattern, even though the word does not officially exist. The invalidity of “radfahren” shows that the whole pattern is invalid.
Edit 2: duden.de only has “Radfahren” as a noun, not as a verb, and DWDS explicitly says “Ungültige Schreibung: radfahren”. Most if not all google hits do use “U-Bahnfahren” as a noun, so maybe this is still allowed.
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Someone should take it upon themself to activate the comments section for all prefix verb issues. It’s a lightning flash of understanding for the struggling beginners like me. Thanks.
English Translation
Watch how I do it.
Ths discussion reminds of my struggle between “leidtun” and “Leid tun”. This has its own complicated history, and according to Duden: “Inzwischen aber, genauer gesagt seit 2006, ist nur noch die Schreibung leidtun zu verwenden.” Hopefully I can finnaly write it correctly without any second thoughts after commenting here.
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That’s not a thing a non-native speaker should fret about too much.
Probably 80 % of the natives will also not be so sure.