Umlaut diacritic usage Although the diacritic letters represent distinct sounds in
German phonology, they are almost universally not considered to be part of the alphabet. Almost all German speakers consider the alphabet to have the 26
cardinal letters above and will name only those when asked to say the alphabet. The
diacritic letters
ä, ö and
ü are used to indicate the presence of
umlauts (frontalizations of back vowels). Before the introduction of the
printing press, frontalization was indicated by placing an
e after the back vowel to be modified, but German printers developed the space-saving typographical convention of replacing the full
e with a small version placed above the vowel to be modified. In German
Kurrent writing, the superscripted
e was simplified to two vertical dashes, which have degenerated to dots in both handwriting and German typesetting. Although the two dots look like those in the
diaeresis (trema) diacritical marking, a distinction should be made between umlaut and diaresis because the two have different functions. When it is not possible to use the umlauts (for example, when using a restricted character set) the characters
Ä, Ö, Ü, ä, ö, ü should be transcribed as
Ae, Oe, Ue, ae, oe, ue respectively, following the earlier postvocalic-
e convention; simply using the base vowel (e.g.,
u instead of
ü) would be wrong and misleading. However, such transcription should be avoided if possible, especially with names. Names often exist in different variants, such as "Müller" and "Mueller", and with such transcriptions in use one could not work out the correct spelling of the name. Automatic back-transcribing is not only wrong for names. Consider, for example,
das neue Buch ("the new book"). This should never be changed to
das neü Buch, as the second
e is completely separate from the
u:
neue is
neu (the root for new) followed by an
e, an inflection. The word
neü does not exist in German. Furthermore, in northern and western Germany, there are family names and place names in which
e lengthens the preceding vowel, as in the former Dutch orthography, such as
Straelen, which is pronounced with a long
a, not an
ä. Similar cases are
Soest,
Coesfeld and
Bernkastel-Kues. In proper names and ethnonyms, there may also appear a rare
ë and
ï, which are not letters with an umlaut, but a
diaeresis, used as in French to distinguish what could be a digraph, for example,
ai in
Karaïmen,
eu in
Alëuten,
ie in
Ferdinand Piëch and
oe in
Bernhard Hoëcker (although Hoëcker added the diaeresis personally). To separate the
au diphthong, as well as some others, which are graphically composed of potentially umlaut-holding letters, the
acute accent is sometimes used (e.g. Saúdi-Arabien). Swiss typewriters and computer keyboards do not allow easy input of uppercase letters with umlauts (nor
ß) for their positions are taken by the most frequent French diacritics. Uppercase umlauts were dropped because they are less common than lowercase ones (especially in Switzerland). Geographical names in particular are supposed to be written with
A, O, U plus
e except "Österreich" (
Austria). The omission can cause some inconvenience since the first letter of every
noun is capitalized in German. Unlike in
Hungarian, the exact shape of the umlaut diacritics, especially when handwritten, is not important, because they are the only ones in the language (except for the dot on
i and
j). They will be understood whether they look like dots (¨),
acute accents (̋), vertical bars (̎), a horizontal bar (
macron, ¯), a
breve (˘), a tiny N, a
tilde (˜), and such variations are often used in stylized writing (e.g. logos). In the past, however, the breve was traditionally used in some scripts to distinguish a
u from an
n, as was the
ring (°). In rare cases the
n was underlined. The breved
u was common in some
Kurrent-derived handwritings; it was mandatory in
Sütterlin.
Sharp s The
eszett or
scharfes S (
ß) represents the
unvoiced s sound. The
German spelling reform of 1996 somewhat reduced usage of this letter in Germany and Austria. It is not used in
Switzerland and
Liechtenstein. As the ß derives from a ligature of lower-case letters, it is itself lower-case. The proper transcription when it cannot be used is
ss. When writing a word in all capital letters, capital
ẞ must be used, or, if it is unavailbale,
SS. This transcription can give rise to ambiguities, albeit rarely; one such case is
in Maßen (in moderation) vs.
in Massen (en masse). For all caps usage, an
uppercase ß has been proposed for over a century, and was officially adopted in 2017. In 2008, it was included in
Unicode 5.1 as U+1E9E, and since 2010 its use is mandatory in official documentation when writing geographical names in all-caps. Although nowadays substituted correctly only by
ss, the letter actually originates from two distinct ligatures (depending on word and spelling rules):
long s with
round s ("ſs") and
long s with
(round) z ("ſz"/"ſʒ"). Some people therefore prefer to substitute "ß" by "sz". According to official rules this is incorrect, but it can avoid possible ambiguities (as in the above "Maßen" vs "Massen" example). Incorrect use of the "ß" letter is a very common type of spelling error even among native German speakers. Although the spelling reform of 1996 was meant to simplify the rules concerning "ß" and "ss", it also caused considerable confusion and is widely disregarded: some people even incorrectly assumed that the "ß" had been abolished completely.
Long s In the
Fraktur typeface and similar scripts, a
long s (
ſ) was used except in syllable endings (cf. Greek
sigma) and sometimes it was historically used in
antiqua fonts as well; but it went out of general use in the early 1940s along with the Fraktur typeface. An example where this convention would avoid ambiguity is
Wachstube, which was written either
Wachſtube =
Wach-Stube (, guardhouse) or
Wachstube =
Wachs-Tube (, tube of wax).
Letter usage in loanwords • Except for the common sequences
sch (),
ch (
allophone: or ) and
ck () the letter
c appears only in
loanwords or in
proper nouns. In many loanwords, including most words of Latin origin, the letter
c pronounced () has been replaced by
k. German words which come from Latin words with
c before
e, i, y, ae, oe are usually pronounced with () and spelled with
z. • The letter
q in German only ever appears in the sequence
qu (), with the exception of loanwords, e.g.,
Coq au vin or
Qigong (which is also written
Chigong). • The letter
x (
Ix, ) occurs almost exclusively in loanwords. Native German words that are now pronounced with a sound are usually written using
chs or
cks, as with
Fuchs (fox). Some exceptions do occur, though, such as
Hexe (
witch),
Nixe (
mermaid) and
Axt (
axe). • The letter
y (
Ypsilon, ) occurs almost exclusively in loanwords, especially words of Greek origin, although some such words (e.g.,
Typ) have become so common that they are no longer perceived as foreign. It used to be more common in
German orthography in earlier centuries, and traces of this earlier usage persist in proper names. It is used either as an alternative letter for
i, for instance in
Mayer /
Meyer (a common family name that occurs also in the spellings
Maier /
Meier), or – especially in the Southwest – as a representation of that goes back to an old , for instance in
Schwyz or
Schnyder (an
Alemannic German variant of the name
Schneider). Another notable exception is
Bayern, the German name of
Bavaria, and derived words like
bayerisch (Bavarian). In loan words from the
French language spelling and accents are usually preserved. For instance,
café is always written
Café in German when it means "coffeehouse";
Cafe would be considered erroneous and it cannot be written
Kaffee either, because this means
coffee. For this reason 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, like
ç in loan words from French or Portuguese, and
ñ in loan words from Spanish.
Sorting There are three ways to deal with the umlauts in
alphabetic sorting. • Treat them like their base characters, as if the umlaut was not present (
DIN 5007-1, section 6.1.1.4.1). This is the preferred method for dictionaries, where umlauted words ("Füße", feet) should appear near their origin words ("Fuß", foot). In words which are the same except for one having an umlaut and one its base character (e.g., "Müll" vs. "Mull"), the word with the base character gets precedence. • Decompose them (invisibly) to vowel plus
e (DIN 5007-2, section 6.1.1.4.2). This is often preferred for personal and geographical names, wherein the characters are used unsystematically, as in German
telephone directories ("Müller, A.; Mueller, B.; Müller, C."). • They are treated like extra letters either placed • after their base letters (Austrian phone books have
ä between
az and
b etc.) or • at the end of the alphabet (as in
Swedish or in extended ASCII).
Microsoft Windows in German versions offers the choice between the first two variants in its internationalisation settings.
Eszett is sorted as though it were
ss. Occasionally it is treated as
s, but this is generally considered incorrect. It is not used at all in Switzerland. Accents in French loan words are always ignored in collation. In rare contexts (e. g. in older indices)
sch (equal to English
sh) and likewise
st and
ch are treated as single letters, but the vocalic
digraphs
ai, ei (historically
ay, ey),
au, äu, eu and the historic
ui and
oi never are. == Letter names ==