30
votes
Can an umlaut be written as a line in handwriting?
Ü/ü should not be written as Ū/ū in handwritten documents.
The 'ū' used to be the distinction between 'n' and 'u' in handwriting because they look very similar. It was a part of the 'Sütterlinschrift' ...
- 834
27
votes
Deutsche Wörter mit allen deutschen Sonderbuchstaben
Ein Übergrößengeschäft ist ein Laden, der sich auf Kleidung oder Schuhe in Übergrößen spezialisiert hat.
- 19.5k
26
votes
Accepted
What is the umbrella term for ä, ö and ü and the little dots on them?
Multiple questions, multiple answers:
In English, the sounds like a, e, i, o, u are called vowel sounds.
Erm, technically true, but you’re forgetting y. And there are a lot more vowel sounds that ...
- 38k
26
votes
Accepted
Ordering German special characters and those from other languages when sorting
Short answer:
Take a look at MySQL and different character-collations. Choose one and follow its rules. Or as @RHa and @cbeleites suggest find a library that provides locale-dependent sorting.
Long ...
- 14k
18
votes
Can an umlaut be written as a line in handwriting?
Some people do this, but that doesn't mean it's correct. It is just sloppy writing and (maybe) a remnant from "Sütterlin" that distinguished the "n" from the "u" that way, and thus has no relationship ...
- 57k
16
votes
What is the umbrella term for ä, ö and ü and the little dots on them?
The result of the dots, so the letter with the dots on it, is an Umlaut – literally a “resounding” – of the vowel.
The dots themselves are commonly known as ä/ö/ü-Striche (or Strichelchen), ...
- 29.2k
16
votes
Accepted
Gödel but Noether?
What you learnt is correct. You always write the umlaut unless you don’t have it on your keyboard. However especially in names the rules are somewhat flexible. So you might see people using the e ...
- 442
15
votes
Accepted
Gibt es eine vollständige Liste von Adjektiven, die einen Umlaut im Komparativ und Superlativ haben?
Abgesehen von einigen zusammengesetzten Adjektiven, die sich analog zum Stammadjektiv verhalten (z. B. wasserarm), werden im Deutschen meines Wissens nur primäre Adjektive¹ mit Umlautung gesteigert. ...
15
votes
Accepted
Evolution of the digraph “ae” in the German language during the centuries
All images are hyperlinks to their sources.
As with all historical typographic and linguistic developments, it’s much more easy to say what happened than why it happened. The following is a brief ...
- 21.5k
14
votes
Gödel but Noether?
Proper nouns are not covered by orthographic rules, full stop. That is the essence when asking for why a given person or a given place is spelt the way they are.
Excursion on the use of umlauts
For ...
- 38k
14
votes
Can an umlaut be written as a line in handwriting?
I'd say it can be written this way. Not that it is taught to be written so, or even encouraged, but everyone who reads it will understand what is meant.
I do not believe this is a remnant from the ...
- 4,727
13
votes
Accepted
Deutsche Wörter mit allen deutschen Sonderbuchstaben
Oh Mann, was für ein Freitag! Da kommt man motiviert in die Firma, um der Arbeitswoche die letzten paar Stunden abzuringen, und dann gibt’s nur Probleme.
Seit ein paar Tagen ist in der Produktion ...
- 750
11
votes
Spelling of Grüß Gott
It's an "umlaut transliteration", if you will, and was quite common in the days of typewriters. In these days of ubiquitous Unicode, there's little excuse for it (US-keyboard or no). Here's probably ...
- 18.8k
10
votes
Spelling of Grüß Gott
If there is no way to type an umlaut character, then replacing e.g. ü by ue is the only correct option. Replacing it by u as you did in your question before the edit is incorrect. Indeed Gruß and grüß ...
- 18.5k
10
votes
Can an umlaut be written as a line in handwriting?
I suggest that the premise of this question is somewhat incorrect. The umlaut dots cannot be written as a single line, but a single line is well what might end up on paper when writing quickly.
The ...
- 7,907
9
votes
Deutsche Wörter mit allen deutschen Sonderbuchstaben
Ein Mikrofilmprinter ist ein Rückvergrößerungsgerät zur Erstellung von Papierkopien aus Mikrofilmen. Analoge Rückvergrößerungsgeräte werden heute nahezu komplett durch Mikrofilmscanner ersetzt.
...
- 9,244
9
votes
Why do some words that are not inflected have an umlaut?
Umlaut marks are usually used to show that an inflection has occurred, that is the umlaut is a synchronic change.
Umlauted vowels are less common than unumlauted vowels, but I think it's going too ...
- 674
8
votes
Gödel but Noether?
A even more famous example is Goethe: The grandfather of the famous German poet
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
did not have the Name Goethe. His name was
Friedrich Georg Göthe
(with ö ...
- 110k
8
votes
Accepted
Umlaut over consonant preceding a vowel
This simply is wrong.
It should be:
BEI VÖLLIGER DUNKELHEIT ENTWICKELN
There is a letter »V̈«, but it is not part of the German language. (Some Oceanic languages use this letter, for example ...
- 110k
8
votes
Warum gibt's keinen Umlaut für e und i?
Das liegt an der Entwicklung der deutschen (und anderen germanischen) Sprache aus dem indoeuropäischen Vorläufer.
Das Indoeuropäische kennt nur fünf verschiedene Vokallaute, die sich in den meisten ...
- 38k
8
votes
Why do some words that are not inflected have an umlaut?
In most of your examples the vowel ä is an actual Umlaut, i.e. a changed vowel a or ā:
Ärger relates to arg, https://www.dwds.de/wb/Ärger
Hälfte relates to halb, https://www.dwds.de/wb/Hälfte
Träne ...
- 14.2k
8
votes
Why do some words that are not inflected have an umlaut?
First of all, let's distinguish between the linguistic phenomenon (Germanic) umlaut (or i-mutation) and the grapheme umlaut diacritic. In German, these two concepts are very closely related, because ...
- 191
7
votes
Accepted
How to learn/explain to pronounce Ä,Ö,Ü,Z,CH?
Ä
There's no obvious difference in pronouncing Ärzte or Ärmel. As for ätzend, the ä is slightly more "e-like" than the usual ä, as it is a short vowel. Ä is close in pronunciation to the a in that or ...
- 15.7k
7
votes
Accepted
Do any German words contain "ae", "oe", or "ue"?
In other words, if I encounter a word containing "ae", "oe", or "ue", can I be sure that the correct way to write the word is with the appropriate umlaut?
No, you can't.
Counterexample: Oboe
- 7,265
7
votes
Accepted
Is it normal that the "ä" is pronounced this way in this word? (Swiss German)
There are several things happening with ä in Swiss German:
The very open front vowel that has developed from Germanic e or from the secondary umlaut of a is consistently transcribed with ä. While ...
- 6,445
6
votes
Accepted
Do all verbs form the conjunctive II with an umlaut?
The rule you cited only applies to strong verbs (also called irregular verbs):
lesen: las, läse
biegen: bog, böge
schaffen: schuf, schüfe
laufen: lief, liefe
It is not applicable to weak ...
- 19.5k
6
votes
What is the umbrella term for ä, ö and ü and the little dots on them?
To be absolutely accurate, “Umlaut” is a technical term for the phonological/historical process which transforms - for example - /u/ to /y/. This is the only meaning recognised in the standard ...
- 3,188
6
votes
Accepted
Umlaut or not on "ihr" form of verb
Ihr lauft is the only correct form, see for example this conjugation table. Same goes for ihr schlaft.
However, in spoken German you may hear ihr läuft. The reason could be the influence of local ...
- 13.1k
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