German alphabet
Encyclopedia
The modern German alphabet is an extended Latin alphabet consisting of 30 letters – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet
plus four extra letters.
In German, the individual letters have neuter gender: das A, das B etc.
s:
and one ligature
:
, 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 umlaut
s. They originated as a, o, u with a superscripted e, which in German Kurrent
writing was written as two vertical dashes. These two dashes have degenerated to dots and look like a diaeresis (trema), but a distinction should be made because the two serve different purposes.
When it is not possible to use the umlauts, for example, when using a restricted character set, the umlauts Ä, Ö, Ü, ä, ö and ü should be transcribed as Ae, Oe, Ue, ae, oe and ue, respectively; simply using the base vowel (e.g. u instead of ü) would be erroneous and be prone to producing ambiguities.
Nevertheless, any such transcription should be avoided when possible, especially with names. Names often exist in a variant that uses this style such as "Müller" and "Mueller". In a text that uses this transcription system, it would be obvious that if a person's occupation is given as "Mueller" (a miller
), it should actually be spelt "Müller", but for a person whose name is given as "Mueller", there would be no way to tell if the name needs to be back-transcribed or not.
Automatic back-transcribing is not only harmful for names. Consider, for example, "das neue Buch" (the new book). This should never be changed into "das neü Buch". Technically, the second e has no connection with the u at all: neue is neu (the root for new) followed by an e, the neuter suffix. The word neü does not exist in German.
Furthermore, in northern and western Germany, there are family names and place names where e lengthens the preceding vowel, as in Straelen
, which is pronounced with a long a, not an ä. Similar cases are Coesfeld
and Bernkastel-Kues
.
In proper names, there may also appear a rare ë
, which is not an umlaut, but a diaeresis to distinguish what could be a digraph as in French, like ie in Ferdinand Piëch
or like oe in Bernhard Hoëcker (although, in the latter case, he himself added the diaeresis).
Swiss typewriters and computer keyboards do not allow easy input of uppercase umlauts (nor ß) for their positions are taken by the most frequent French diacritics. The decision to drop the uppercase umlauts is due to the fact that uppercase umlauts 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
). This can cause some inconvenience since the first letter of every noun
is capitalized in German.
Unlike in some other languages (such as Hungarian
), the actual form of the umlaut diacritics, especially when handwritten, is not all that important, because they are the only ones of the language (except for the dot on i and j). They might look like dots ( ¨ ), acute accents ( ̋ ), vertical bars ( ̎ ), a horizontal bar (macron
, ¯ ), a breve
( ˘ ), a tiny N, a tilde
( ˜ ), etc.
) is used. It exists only in a lowercase version since it can never occur at the beginning of a word (there are a few loan words starting with an s followed by a z (e.g. Szegediner Krautfleisch but that is not the same as the eszett which counts as one letter).
In all caps it is converted to SS, while in Switzerland
and Liechtenstein
ß is not used at all, but ss instead. This gives rise to ambiguities, albeit extremely rarely; the most commonly cited such case is that of "in Maßen" (in moderation) vs. in Massen (en masse). For all caps usage, an uppercase ß
had been postulated since 1879 and was officially introduced in 2008 into Unicode 5.1
as U+1E9E (HTML
: ẞ), although a definite form hasn't been found yet.
Regulations introduced as part of the German spelling reform of 1996
reduced usage of this letter for Germany and Austria (see ß). 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". By official rules this is incorrect, but can avoid possible ambiguities (as in the aforementioned "Maßen" vs "Massen" example).
Incorrect use of the "ß" letter is a very common source of spelling errors 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, even to the point that some people incorrectly assumed that the "ß" had been abolished completely.
(ſ ) is used except for syllable endings (cf. Greek sigma) and sometimes this has been historically used in antiqua fonts as well, but in general it went out of use in the early 1940s along with Fraktur typeface. An example where this convention would help disambiguation is “Wachstube”, which was either written “Wachſtube” = “Wach-Stube” (mil. guard-house) or “Wachstube” = “Wachs-Tube” (tube of wax).
spelling and diacritics are usually preserved (e.g., café in the meaning of coffeehouse). For this reason German typewriter
s and computer keyboards offer two dead key
s, one for accent grave and acute and one for circumflex (`, ´ and ^). Other letters occur less often, like ç in loan words from French or Portuguese, or ñ in loan words from Spanish.
.
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 digraph
s ai, ei (historically ay, ey), au, äu, eu and the historic ui and oi never are.
similar to the ICAO spelling alphabet. The official version in Germany, laid down in DIN 5009, is as follows:
The spelling alphabet was changed several times during the 20th century, in some cases for political reasons. In 1934, supposedly "Jewish" names were replaced. Thus, David, Jakob, Nathan, Samuel and Zacharias became Dora, Jot, Nordpol, Siegfried and Zeppelin. In Germany, the 1948 and 1950 versions reverted to some of the old versions but introduced additional changes. Many of the older, officially obsolete forms are still found in popular use, in particular Siegfried and Zeppelin. Some letter names are still official in Austria. The official Austrian version, as laid down in ÖNORM A 1081, differs from DIN 5009 in the following places:
Konrad is also used in Germany, although this is not and apparently never was official there. Konrad can cause confusion since the first name "Conrad" (spelled with a "C") also exists. Not following the norm, but not uncommon are CHristine, Norbert and Zeppelin – especially in Austria.
In Switzerland and Liechtenstein yet another slightly different spelling alphabet is used.
Basic modern Latin alphabet
The International Organization for Standardization basic Latin alphabet consists of the following 26 letters:By the 1960s it became apparent to the computer and telecommunications industries in the First World that a non-proprietary method of encoding characters was needed...
plus four extra letters.
In German, the individual letters have neuter gender: das A, das B etc.
Latin letters
| Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A A A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :... |
B B B is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds , most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive.-History:... |
C C Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets... |
D D D is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the... |
E E E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:... |
F F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The origin of ⟨f⟩ is the Semitic letter vâv that represented a sound like or . Graphically, it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club... |
G G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,... |
H H H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.... |
I I I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound... |
J J Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic... |
K K K is the eleventh letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet.-History and usage:In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive; this sound is also transcribed by in the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA.... |
L L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet... |
M M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water... |
N N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet... |
O O O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a... |
P P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Usage:In English and most other European languages, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive. Both initial and final Ps can be combined with many other discrete consonants in English words... |
Q Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones... |
R R R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R... |
S S S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent... |
T T T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets... |
U U U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.... |
V V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.... |
W W W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V... |
X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Uses:In mathematics, x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the Arabic word šay شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic... |
Y Y Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound... |
Z Z Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal... |
| Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z |
Rare letters
- Except for the common sequences sch (/ʃ/), ch (allophoneAllophoneIn phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
: /x/ or /ç/) and ck (/k/) the letter c appears only in loanwordLoanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s or in proper nounProper nounA proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...
s. - The letter q in German only ever appears in the sequence qu (/kv/), with the exception of loanwords, e.g. Coq au vinCoq au vinCoq au vin is a French braise of chicken cooked with wine, lardons, mushrooms, and optionally garlic.While the wine is typically Burgundy, many regions of France have variants of coq au vin using the local wine, such as coq au vin jaune , coq au Riesling , coq au pourpre , coq au Champagne, and so...
or QigongQigongQigong or chi kung is a practice of aligning breath, movement, and awareness for exercise, healing, and meditation...
(which is also written Chigong). - The letter x (Ix, /ɪks/) occurs almost exclusively in loanwords. Native German words that are now pronounced with a /ks/ sound are usually written using chs or cks. Some exceptions do occur, though, like in Hexe (witch), Nixe (mermaidMermaidA mermaid is a mythological aquatic creature with a female human head, arms, and torso and the tail of a fish. A male version of a mermaid is known as a "merman" and in general both males and females are known as "merfolk"...
) and Axt (axeAxeThe axe, or ax, is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood; to harvest timber; as a weapon; and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol...
). - The letter y (Ypsilon, /ˈʏpsilɔn/) 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 orthographyGerman orthographyGerman orthography, although largely phonemic, shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling, once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the...
in earlier centuries, and traces of this earlier usage persist in proper names. It is used either as an alternative letter for iII is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound...
, for instance in Mayer / Meyer (a common family name that occurs also in the spelling Maier / Meier), or – especially in the Southwest – as a representation of [iː] that goes back to an old IJ (digraph), for instance in SchwyzSchwyzThe town of is the capital of the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland.The Federal Charter of 1291 or Bundesbrief, the charter that eventually led to the foundation of Switzerland, can be seen at the Bundesbriefmuseum.-History of the toponym:...
or Schnyder (an Alemannic GermanAlemannic GermanAlemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. It is spoken by approximately ten million people in six countries: Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, France and Italy...
variant of the name Schneider). Another notable exception is Bayern, the German name of BavariaBavariaBavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
, and derived words like bayerisch (Bavarian).
Extra letters
The German language additionally uses three letters with diacriticDiacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s:
- Ä/äÄ"Ä" and "ä" are both characters that represent either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with an umlaut mark or diaeresis.- Independent letter :...
, Ö/öÖ"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
, Ü/üÜÜ, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
and one ligature
Ligature (typography)
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms", where the specific shape of a letter depends on...
:
- ßßIn the German alphabet, ß is a letter that originated as a ligature of ss or sz. Like double "s", it is pronounced as an , but in standard spelling, it is only used after long vowels and diphthongs, while ss is used after short vowels...
(called eszett (sz) or scharfes S, sharp s)
Umlauts
Although the diacritic letters represent distinct sounds in German phonologyGerman phonology
This article is about the phonology of the German language based on standard German. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof, including geographical variants .Since German is a pluricentric language, there are a number of different...
, 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
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
letters ä
Ä
"Ä" and "ä" are both characters that represent either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with an umlaut mark or diaeresis.- Independent letter :...
, ö
Ö
"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut...
and ü
Ü
Ü, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis...
are used to indicate umlaut
Germanic umlaut
In linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. The term umlaut was originally coined and is used principally in connection with the study of the Germanic languages...
s. They originated as a, o, u with a superscripted e, which in German Kurrent
Kurrent
Kurrent is an old form of German language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as Kurrentschrift or Alte Deutsche Schrift...
writing was written as two vertical dashes. These two dashes have degenerated to dots and look like a diaeresis (trema), but a distinction should be made because the two serve different purposes.
When it is not possible to use the umlauts, for example, when using a restricted character set, the umlauts Ä, Ö, Ü, ä, ö and ü should be transcribed as Ae, Oe, Ue, ae, oe and ue, respectively; simply using the base vowel (e.g. u instead of ü) would be erroneous and be prone to producing ambiguities.
Nevertheless, any such transcription should be avoided when possible, especially with names. Names often exist in a variant that uses this style such as "Müller" and "Mueller". In a text that uses this transcription system, it would be obvious that if a person's occupation is given as "Mueller" (a miller
Miller
A miller usually refers to a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a cereal crop to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents in other languages around the world...
), it should actually be spelt "Müller", but for a person whose name is given as "Mueller", there would be no way to tell if the name needs to be back-transcribed or not.
Automatic back-transcribing is not only harmful for names. Consider, for example, "das neue Buch" (the new book). This should never be changed into "das neü Buch". Technically, the second e has no connection with the u at all: neue is neu (the root for new) followed by an e, the neuter suffix. The word neü does not exist in German.
Furthermore, in northern and western Germany, there are family names and place names where e lengthens the preceding vowel, as in Straelen
Straelen
Straelen is a municipality in the district of Cleves, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located near the border with the Netherlands, approx. 10 km north-east of Venlo.Straelen was first mentioned in Latin as Strala in 1063.-External links:*...
, which is pronounced with a long a, not an ä. Similar cases are Coesfeld
Coesfeld
Coesfeld is the capital of the district of Coesfeld in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.-History:Coesfeld received its city rights in 1197, but was first recorded earlier than that in the biography of St. Ludger, patron and first bishop of the diocese of Munster who was born north of...
and Bernkastel-Kues
Bernkastel-Kues
Bernkastel-Kues is a well-known winegrowing centre on the Middle Moselle in the Bernkastel-Wittlich district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...
.
In proper names, there may also appear a rare ë
Ë
is a letter in the Albanian, Ripuarian, Uyghur Latin Script, Ladin, and Kashubian languages. This letter also appears in Afrikaans, Dutch, French, Abruzzese dialect , and Luxembourgish language as a variant of letter "e"...
, which is not an umlaut, but a diaeresis to distinguish what could be a digraph as in French, like ie in Ferdinand Piëch
Ferdinand Piëch
Ferdinand Karl Piëch is an Austrian business magnate, engineer and executive who is currently the chairman of the supervisory board of Volkswagen Group....
or like oe in Bernhard Hoëcker (although, in the latter case, he himself added the diaeresis).
Swiss typewriters and computer keyboards do not allow easy input of uppercase umlauts (nor ß) for their positions are taken by the most frequent French diacritics. The decision to drop the uppercase umlauts is due to the fact that uppercase umlauts 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
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
). This can cause some inconvenience since the first letter of every noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
is capitalized in German.
Unlike in some other languages (such as Hungarian
Hungarian alphabet
The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional...
), the actual form of the umlaut diacritics, especially when handwritten, is not all that important, because they are the only ones of the language (except for the dot on i and j). They might look like dots ( ¨ ), acute accents ( ̋ ), vertical bars ( ̎ ), a horizontal bar (macron
Macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
, ¯ ), a breve
Breve
A breve is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron , but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip...
( ˘ ), a tiny N, a tilde
Tilde
The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
( ˜ ), etc.
Sharp s
Also, the eszett or scharfes S (ßß
In the German alphabet, ß is a letter that originated as a ligature of ss or sz. Like double "s", it is pronounced as an , but in standard spelling, it is only used after long vowels and diphthongs, while ss is used after short vowels...
) is used. It exists only in a lowercase version since it can never occur at the beginning of a word (there are a few loan words starting with an s followed by a z (e.g. Szegediner Krautfleisch but that is not the same as the eszett which counts as one letter).
In all caps it is converted to SS, while in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein
The Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
ß is not used at all, but ss instead. This gives rise to ambiguities, albeit extremely rarely; the most commonly cited such case is that of "in Maßen" (in moderation) vs. in Massen (en masse). For all caps usage, an uppercase ß
Capital ß
Capital sharp s is the contestable majuscule of eszett. Sharp s is nearly unique among the letters of the Latin alphabet in that it has no traditional upper case form . This is because it never occurs initially in German text, and traditional German printing never used all-caps...
had been postulated since 1879 and was officially introduced in 2008 into Unicode 5.1
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
as U+1E9E (HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
: ẞ), although a definite form hasn't been found yet.
Regulations introduced as part of the German spelling reform of 1996
German spelling reform of 1996
The German orthography reform of 1996 was an attempt to simplify the spelling of the German language and thus to make it easier to learn, without substantially changing the rules familiar to all living users of the language....
reduced usage of this letter for Germany and Austria (see ß). 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". By official rules this is incorrect, but can avoid possible ambiguities (as in the aforementioned "Maßen" vs "Massen" example).
Incorrect use of the "ß" letter is a very common source of spelling errors 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, even to the point that some people incorrectly assumed that the "ß" had been abolished completely.
Long s
In Fraktur typeface and similar scripts a long sLong s
The long, medial or descending s is a form of the minuscule letter s formerly used where s occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word, for example "ſinfulneſs" . The modern letterform was called the terminal, round, or short s.-History:The long s is derived from the old Roman cursive...
(ſ ) is used except for syllable endings (cf. Greek sigma) and sometimes this has been historically used in antiqua fonts as well, but in general it went out of use in the early 1940s along with Fraktur typeface. An example where this convention would help disambiguation is “Wachstube”, which was either written “Wachſtube” = “Wach-Stube” (mil. guard-house) or “Wachstube” = “Wachs-Tube” (tube of wax).
Other letters
In loan words from the French languageFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
spelling and diacritics are usually preserved (e.g., café in the meaning of coffeehouse). For this reason German typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s and computer keyboards offer two dead key
Dead key
A dead key is a special kind of a modifier key on a typewriter or computer keyboard that is typically used to attach a specific diacritic to a base letter. The dead key does not generate a character by itself but modifies the character generated by the key struck immediately after...
s, one for accent grave and acute and one for circumflex (`, ´ and ^). Other letters occur less often, like ç in loan words from French or Portuguese, or ñ in loan words from Spanish.
Sorting
There are three ways to deal with the umlauts in alphabetic sortingCollation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...
.
- Treat them like their base characters, as if the umlaut was not present (DINDinDIN or Din or din can have several meanings:* A din is a loud noise.* Dīn, an Arabic term meaning "religion" or "way of life".* Din is one of the ten aspects of the Ein Sof in Kabbalah ....
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 directoriesTelephone directoryA telephone directory is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that publishes the directory...
("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 SwedishSwedish alphabetModern Swedish is written with a 29-letter Latin alphabet:Prior to the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista in 2006, the letters and were collated together....
or in extended ASCII).
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
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 digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s ai, ei (historically ay, ey), au, äu, eu and the historic ui and oi never are.
Letter names
- A: /aː/
- Ä: /ɛː/
- B: /beː/
- C: /tseː/
- D: /deː/
- E: /eː/
- F: /ɛf/
- G: /geː/
- H: /haː/
- I: /iː/
- J: /jɔt/; in Austria /jeː/
- K: /kaː/
- L: /ɛl/
- M: /ɛm/
- N: /ɛn/
- O: /oː/
- Ö: /øː/
- P: /peː/
- Q: /kuː/; in Austria /kveː/
- R: /ɛɐ̯/
- S: /ɛs/
- ß: Eszett, /ɛs'tsɛt/; scharfes S, /ʃaːfəs ɛs/
- T: /teː/
- U: /uː/
- Ü: /yː/
- V: /faʊ/
- W: /veː/
- X: /ɪks/
- Y: /'ʏpsilɔn/
- Z: /tsɛt/
Spelling alphabet
There is a German spelling alphabetSpelling alphabet
A spelling alphabet, radio alphabet, or telephone alphabet is a set of words which are used to stand for the letters of an alphabet. Each word in the spelling alphabet typically replaces the name of the letter with which it starts...
similar to the ICAO spelling alphabet. The official version in Germany, laid down in DIN 5009, is as follows:
- Anton, Berta, Cäsar, Dora, Emil, Friedrich, Gustav, Heinrich, Ida, Julius, Kaufmann, Ludwig, Martha, Nordpol, Otto, Paula, Quelle, Richard, Samuel, Theodor, Ulrich, Viktor, Wilhelm, Xanthippe, Ypsilon, Zacharias; Ärger, Ökonom, Übermut, CHarlotte, SCHule, Eszett.
The spelling alphabet was changed several times during the 20th century, in some cases for political reasons. In 1934, supposedly "Jewish" names were replaced. Thus, David, Jakob, Nathan, Samuel and Zacharias became Dora, Jot, Nordpol, Siegfried and Zeppelin. In Germany, the 1948 and 1950 versions reverted to some of the old versions but introduced additional changes. Many of the older, officially obsolete forms are still found in popular use, in particular Siegfried and Zeppelin. Some letter names are still official in Austria. The official Austrian version, as laid down in ÖNORM A 1081, differs from DIN 5009 in the following places:
- K: Konrad, S: Siegfried, X: Xaver, Z: Zürich, Ö: Österreich, Ü: Übel, ß: scharfes S.
Konrad is also used in Germany, although this is not and apparently never was official there. Konrad can cause confusion since the first name "Conrad" (spelled with a "C") also exists. Not following the norm, but not uncommon are CHristine, Norbert and Zeppelin – especially in Austria.
In Switzerland and Liechtenstein yet another slightly different spelling alphabet is used.