Capitalization A typical feature of German spelling is the general
capitalization of nouns and of most
nominalized words. In addition, capital letters are used: at the beginning of sentences (may be used after a colon, when the part of a sentence after the colon can be treated as a sentence); in the formal pronoun 'you' and the determiner 'your' (optionally in other second-person pronouns in letters); in adjectives at the beginning of proper names (e.g. 'the Pacific Ocean'); in adjectives with the suffix '-er' from geographical names (e.g. ); in adjectives with the suffix '-sch' from proper names if written with the apostrophe before the suffix (e.g. 'Ohm's law', also written ).
Compound words Compound words, including nouns, are usually written together, e.g. ( + ; 'house door'), ( + ; 'table lamp'), ( + + ; 'cold water tap/faucet). This can lead to long words: the longest word in regular use, ('legal protection insurance companies'), consists of 39 letters.
Hyphen in compound words Compounds involving letters, abbreviations, or numbers (written in figures, even with added suffixes) are hyphenated: 'A major', 'US embassy', 'with 10 percent', 'group of ten'. The hyphen is used when adding suffixes to letters: 'nth'. It is used in substantivated compounds such as 'alternative' (literally 'either-or'); in phrase-word compounds such as 'equinox', 'postponing' (substantivation of 'to postpone'); in compounds of words containing hyphen with other words: 'A major scale'; in coordinated adjectives: 'German-English dictionary'. Compound adjectives meaning colours are written with a hyphen if they mean two colours: 'red and brown', but without a hyphen if they mean an intermediate colour: 'reddish brown' (from the spelling reform of 1996 to the 2024 revision of the orthographic rules, both variants could be used in both meanings). Optionally the hyphen can be used to emphasize individual components, to clarify the meaning of complicated compounds, to avoid misunderstandings or when three identical letters occur together (in practice, in this case it is mostly used when writing nouns with triple vowels, e.g. 'elephant seal'). The hyphen is used in compounds where the second part or both parts are proper names, e.g. 'the photographer Hansen', '
Lüdenscheid, the city of millers', double-barrelled surnames such as ; geographical names such as . Double given names are variously written as . Some compound geographical names are written as one word (e.g. 'North Korea') or as two words (e.g. geographical names beginning with or ). The hyphen is not used when compounds with a proper name in the second part are used as common nouns, e.g. 'crybaby'; also in the name of the fountain . The hyphen is used in words derived from proper names with hyphen, from proper names of more than one word, or from more than one proper name (optional in derivations with the suffix from geographical names from more than one word). Optionally the hyphen can be used in compounds where the first part is a proper name. Compounds of the type "geographical name+specification" are written with a hyphen or as two words: or .
Vowel length Even though
vowel length is
phonemic in German, it is not consistently represented. However, there are different ways of identifying long vowels: • A vowel in an open syllable (a
free vowel) is long, for instance in ('to give'), ('to say'). The rule is unreliable in given names, cf. . • It is rare to see a bare used to indicate a long vowel . It occurs mainly in loanwords, e.g. 'crisis', but also in some native German words, e.g. 'we', 'give (imperative)'. Mostly, the long vowel is represented in writing by the
digraph , for instance in ('love'), ('here'). This use is a historical spelling based on the Middle High German diphthong which was
monophthongized in Early New High German. It has been
generalized to words that etymologically never had that diphthong, for instance ('much'), ('peace') (Middle High German , ). Occasionally – typically in word-final position – this digraph represents as in the plural noun ('knees') (cf. singular ). In the words (
viertel) ('quarter'), ('fourteen'), ('forty'), represents a short vowel, cf. ('four'). In
Fraktur, where capital and are identical or near-identical \mathfrak{J}, the combinations
Ie and
Je are confusable; hence is not used at the start of a word, for example ('hedgehog'), ('Irishman'). • A silent indicates the vowel length in certain cases. That derives from an old in some words, for instance ('to see') ('ten'), but in other words it has no etymological justification, for instance ('to go') or ('to mill'). Occasionally a digraph can be redundantly followed by , either due to analogy, such as ('sees', from ) or etymology, such as ('cattle', MHG ), ('rough', pre-1996 spelling, now written , MHG ). • The letters are doubled in a few words that have long vowels, for instance ('seed'), ('sea'/'lake'), ('moor'). • A doubled consonant after a vowel indicates that the vowel is short, while a single consonant often indicates the vowel is long, e.g. ('comb') has a short vowel , while ('came') has a long vowel . Two consonants are not doubled: , which is replaced by (until the spelling reform of 1996, however, was divided across a line break as ), and , which is replaced by . In loanwords, (which may correspond with in the original spelling) and can occur. • For
different consonants and for sounds represented by more than one letter ( and ) after a vowel, no clear rule can be given, because they can appear after long vowels, yet are not redoubled if belonging to the same stem, e.g. 'moon', 'hand'. On a stem boundary, reduplication usually takes place, e.g., 'takes'; however, in fixed, no longer productive derivatives, this too can be lost, e.g., 'business' despite 'to get something done'. • indicates that the preceding vowel is long, e.g. 'street' vs. a short vowel in 'mass' or 'host'/'lot'. In addition to that, texts written before the 1996 spelling reform also use at the ends of words and before consonants, e.g. 'wet' and 'had to' (after the reform spelled and ), so vowel length in these positions could not be detected by the , cf. 'measure' and 'was based' (both unaffected by the reform).
Double or triple consonants Even though German does not have phonemic
consonant length, there are many instances of doubled or even tripled consonants in the spelling. A single consonant following a
checked vowel is doubled if another vowel follows, for instance 'always', 'let'. These consonants are analyzed as
ambisyllabic because they constitute not only the
syllable onset of the second syllable but also the
syllable coda of the first syllable, which must not be empty because the
syllable nucleus is a checked vowel. By analogy, if a word has one form with a doubled consonant, all forms of that word are written with a doubled consonant, even if they do not fulfill the conditions for consonant doubling; for instance, 'to run' → 'he runs'; 'kisses' → 'kiss'. Doubled consonants can occur in composite words when the first part ends in the same consonant the second part starts with, e.g. in the word ('sheepskin', composed of 'sheep' and 'skin, fur, pelt'). Composite words can also have tripled letters. While this is usually a sign that the consonant is actually spoken long, it does not affect the pronunciation per se: the in ('oxygen bottle', composed of 'oxygen' and 'bottle') is exactly as long as the ff in . According to the spelling before 1996, the three consonants would be shortened before vowels, but retained before consonants and in hyphenation, so the word ('navigation, shipping', composed of 'ship' and 'drive, trip, tour') was then written , whereas already had a triple . With the aforementioned change in spelling, even a new source of tripled consonant letters, namely the tripled consonant , which in pre-1996 spelling could not occur as it was rendered , was introduced, e.g. ('compulsory round' in certain card games, composed of 'must' and 'game').
Typical letters • : This digraph represents the
diphthong . The spelling goes back to the Middle High German pronunciation of that diphthong, which was . The spelling is found in only a very few native words (such as 'string', 'orphan') but is commonly used to romanize in foreign loans from languages such as Chinese. • : This digraph represents the diphthong , which goes back to the Middle High German monophthong represented by . When the sound is created by
umlaut of (from MHG ), it is spelled . • : This letter alternates with . For more information, see
above. • : At the beginning of a word or syllable, these digraphs are pronounced . In the Middle Ages, the
sibilant that was inherited from
Proto-Germanic was pronounced as an
alveolo-palatal consonant or unlike the
voiceless alveolar sibilant that had developed in the
High German consonant shift. In the Late Middle Ages, certain instances of merged with , but others developed into . The change to was represented in certain spellings such as 'snow', 'cherry' (Middle High German , ). The digraphs , however, remained unaltered. • : The letter occurs only in a few native words, and then it represents . That goes back to the 12th and 13th century, when prevocalic was voiced to . The voicing was lost again in the late Middle Ages, but the still remains in certain words such as in (cf. Scandinavian
fugl or English
fowl) 'bird' (hence, is sometimes called ), 'much'. • : The letter represents the sound . In the 17th century, the former sound became , but the spelling remained the same. An analogous sound change had happened in
late-antique Latin. • : The letter represents the sound . The sound, a product of the
High German consonant shift, has been written with since
Old High German in the 8th century.
Foreign words For technical terms, the foreign spelling is often retained such as or in the word (physics) of Greek origin. For some common affixes however, like or , it is allowed to use or instead. Both and are correct, but the mixed variants or are not. or / , though in the latter case the revised one does not usually occur. For some words for which the Germanized form was common even before the reform of 1996, the foreign version is no longer allowed. A notable example is the word "photograph", which may no longer be spelled as . Other examples are (telephone) which was already Germanized as some decades ago or (office) which got replaced by the Germanized version even earlier. Except for the common sequences (), ( or ) and (), the letter appears only in
loanwords or in
proper nouns. In many loanwords, including most words of Latin origin, the letter pronounced () has been replaced by . Alternatively, German words which come from Latin words with before are usually pronounced with () and spelled with . However, certain older spellings occasionally remain, mostly for decorative reasons, such as instead of . The letter in German appears only in the sequence () except for loanwords such as or (the spelling was also in use but is nowadays nonstandard). The letter (, ) occurs almost exclusively in loanwords such as (xylophone) and names, e.g. and . Native German words now pronounced with a sound are usually written using or , as with (fox). Some exceptions occur such as (
witch), (
mermaid), (
axe) and . The letter (, ) occurs almost exclusively in loanwords, especially words of Greek origin, but some such words (such as ) have become so common that they are no longer perceived as foreign. It used to be more common in earlier centuries, and traces of this earlier usage persist in proper names. It is used either as an alternative letter for , for instance in / (a common
family name that occurs also in the spellings / ), or especially in the Southwest, as a representation of that goes back to an old
IJ (digraph), for instance in or (an
Alemannic variant of the name ). Another notable exception is ("
Bavaria") and derived words like ("Bavarian"); this actually used to be spelt with an until the King of Bavaria introduced the as a sign of his
philhellenism (his son would become King of Greece later). The Latin and Ancient Greek diphthongs and are normally rendered as and in German, whereas English usually uses a simple (but see
List of English words that may be spelled with a ligature): '
present tense' (Latin ), 'federation' (Latin ). The etymological spelling for the sounds before vowels is used in many words of Latin origin, mostly ending in , but also , etc. Latin in feminine nouns is typically simplified to in German; in related words, both and are allowed: 'power' (from Latin ), 'potential' (noun), 'potential' (adj.). Latin in neuter plural nouns may be retained, but is also Germanized orthographically and morphologically to : 'ingredient', plural ; 'expectorant', plural or . In loan words from the
French language, spelling and accents are usually preserved. For instance,
café in the sense of "coffeehouse" is always written in German; accentless
Cafe would be considered erroneous, and the word cannot be written , which means "coffee". ( is normally pronounced ; is mostly pronounced in Germany but in Austria.) Thus, German
typewriters and computer keyboards offer two
dead keys: one for the
acute and
grave accents and one for
circumflex. Other letters occur less often such as in loan words from French or Portuguese, and in loan words from Spanish. A number of loanwords from French are spelled in a partially adapted way: (quarantine), (communiqué), (overture) from French . In Switzerland, where French is one of the official languages, people are less prone to use adapted and especially partially adapted spellings of loanwords from French and more often use original spellings, e.g. . In one curious instance, the word ('ski') is pronounced as if it were all over the German-speaking areas (reflecting its pronunciation in its source language
Norwegian), but only written that way in Austria. ==Grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences==