The German alphabet consists of the same 26 letters as the modern Roman alphabet: For other uses, see Alphabet (disambiguation). ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

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

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

German alphabet
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For other uses of A, see A (disambiguation). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up C, c in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For the emoticon :D, see Emoticon. ... Look up E, e in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up F, f in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see G (disambiguation). ... Look up H, h in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up I, i in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see J (disambiguation). ... Look up K, k in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see L (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see M (disambiguation). ... Look up N, n in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up O, o in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article is about the Latin alphabet letter. ... Look up Q, q in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up R, r in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up S, s in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Its name in English is tee . ... Look up U, u in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up V, v in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up W, w in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see X (disambiguation). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Look up Z, z in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Image File history File links German_alphabet. ...

Rare letters

• Except for the common sequences sch (/ʃ/), ch (allophone: /x/ or /ç/) and ck (/k/) the letter c used to appear only in loan words.
• The letter q only ever appears in the sequence qu (/kv/).
• The letter y (Ypsilon, /'ʏpsilɔn/) occurs almost exclusively in loan words, 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 Meyer (a common family name that occurs also in the spelling Meier) or Bayern (Bavaria, but compare Bairisch, 'the Bavarian languages'), or – especially in the Southwest – as a representation of [iː] that goes back to an old IJ (digraph), for instance in Schwyz or Schnyder (an Alemannic German variant of the name Schneider).
• The letter x (Ix, /ɪks/) occurs almost only in loan words. Natively 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) and Axt (axe).

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... Look up I, i in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see Bavaria (disambiguation). ... The words “ijsvrij” and “yoghurt” in various forms of handwriting. ... The town of   (French: , Italian: ) is the capital of the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland. ... Alemannic German (Alemannisch) is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Witchcraft. ... Axe For other uses, see Axe (disambiguation). ...

Extra letters

The German language additionally uses three letters with diacritics and one ligature: Example of a letter with a diacritic A diacritical mark or diacritic, also called an accent, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more letterforms are written or printed as a unit. ...

ä, ö, ü / Ä, Ö, Ü

ß (called es-zett or scharfes S (sharp s) )

German extra letters
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Ä, or ä, is a glyph which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, the letter A with umlaut, or a letter A with diaeresis. ... Ö, or ö, is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut or diaeresis. ... Ü, or ü, is a character which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with umlaut or diaeresis. ... ß as the combination of ſs on a Pirna street sign (Waldstraße) This article is about the letter ß in the German alphabet. ... Image File history File links German_extra_letters. ...

Umlauts

See also: Umlaut (diacritic)

Although the diacritic letters represent distinct sounds in German phonology, they are almost universally not considered part of the alphabet. Almost all German speakers consider the alphabet to have the 26 letters above and will name only those when asked to say the alphabet.^{[citation needed]} The umlaut mark (or simply umlaut) and the trema or diaeresis mark (or simply diaeresis) are two diacritics consisting of a pair of dots placed over a letter. ...

The diacritic letters ä, ö and ü are used to indicate umlauts. The two dashes are often degenerated to dots. In this case they look like, but are not a trema. Actually they are derived from a superscript lowercase E. Example of a letter with a diacritic A diacritical mark or diacritic, also called an accent, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... Ä, or ä, is a glyph which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, the letter A with umlaut, or a letter A with diaeresis. ... Ö, or ö, is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut or diaeresis. ... Ãœ, or ü, is a character which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with umlaut or diaeresis. ... In linguistics, umlaut (from German um- around/the other way + Laut sound) is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a vowel or semivowel in a following syllable. ... Ä ä Ö ö Ãœ ü The umlaut mark (or simply umlaut) and the trema or diaeresis mark (or simply diaeresis) are two diacritics consisting of a pair of dots placed over a letter. ...

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 considered erroneous by German speakers and is prone to producing ambiguities.

Nevertheless, any such transcription should be avoided when possible, especially with names. The reason for this is that names often exist in a variant which uses this style, e.g. "Müller" and "Mueller". In a text which uses this transcription system, it would be obvious that if a person's occupation is given as "Mueller" (a miller), that 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. For other uses, see Miller (disambiguation). ...

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 word neü does not exist in German.

In proper names there rarely may also appear an ë, which is not an umlaut, but a trema to distinguish what could be a digraph as in French, like oe in Bernhard Hoëcker (although in this case the trema was added artificially by that person). (e-umlaut or diaeresis) is a letter of Albanian and Kashubian language. ... The umlaut mark (or simply umlaut) and the trema or diaeresis mark (or simply diaeresis) are two diacritics consisting of a pair of dots placed over a letter. ...

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 often written with A, O, U plus e — despite "Österreich" (Austria). This can cause some inconvenience since the first letter of every noun is normally capitalized in German. In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ...

Unlike other languages (e. g. 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 (including the dot on i and j). They might look like dots (¨), acute accents (̋), vertical bars (̎), one horizontal bar/macron (¯), a tiny N or a tilde (˜) etc. A macron, from Greek (makros) meaning large, is a diacritic ¯ placed over a vowel originally to indicate that the vowel is long. ...

Sharp s

Also, the es-zett or scharfes S (ß) 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 es-zett which counts as one letter). ß as the combination of Å¿s on a Pirna street sign (Waldstraße) This article is about the letter ß in the German alphabet. ...

In all caps it is converted to SS, while in Switzerland 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). Regulations introduced as part of the German spelling reform of 1996 reduced usage of this letter for Germany and Austria (see ß). The German spelling reform of 1996 (Rechtschreibreform) is based on an international agreement signed in Vienna in July 1996 by the governments of the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, a quadrilingual country. ... ß as the combination of Å¿s on a Pirna street sign (Waldstraße) This article is about the letter ß in the German alphabet. ...

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.

Long s

In fraktur and similar scripts a long s (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. 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). The German word Fraktur (pronounced in IPA) refers to a specific blackletter typeface. ... An italicized long s used in the word Congress in the United States Bill of Rights. ... Sigma (upper case Σ, lower case σ, alternative ς) is the 18th letter of the Greek alphabet. ... A facsimile of Nicholas Jensons roman type used in Venice circa 1470. ...

French

In loan words from the French language spelling and diacritics are usually preserved (e.g., café in the meaning of coffeehouse). For this reason German typewriters and computer keyboards offer three dead keys, one for accent grave, one for acute and one for circumflex (`, ´ and ^). French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ... Mechanical desktop typewriters, such as this Underwood Five, were long time standards of government agencies, newsrooms, and sales offices. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Combining character. ...

Sorting

There are three ways to deal with the umlauts in alphabetic sorting. Alphabetical redirects here. ...

1. Treat them like their base characters, as if the dots were not present (DIN 5007-1). 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.
2. Decompose them (invisibly) to vowel plus e (DIN 5007-2). 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.").
3. They are treated like extra letters either placed
   1. after their base letters—Austrian phone books have ä between a and b etc.—or
   2. 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. Look up din in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Moscow phone book, 1930. ... Windows redirects here. ...

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 sch (equal to English sh) and likewise 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. Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Phonetic alphabet

There is a German equivalent to the English-language NATO phonetic alphabet. The official version, laid down in DIN 5009, is as follows: FAA radiotelephony phonetic alphabet and Morse code chart. ...

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 official Austrian and Swiss versions are somewhat different. The German 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. 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. Konrad is also used very often, although this was apparently never official in Germany (it is the official version in Austria).

See also

• German orthography