| German Alphabet |
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: 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 : () Rare letters
Extra letters The German language additionally uses three Diacritic letters and one Ligature : : ä, ö, ü / Ä , Ö , Ü : ß (called ''es-zett'' or ''scharfes s'') : () Umlauts 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. The Diacritic letters '' ä , ö '' and '' ü '' are used to indicate Umlaut s. When it is not possible to use the umlauts, e. g. when using a restricted character set, the umlauts ''Ä, Ö, Ü, ä, ö'' and ''ü'' can be transcribed as ''Ae, Oe, Ue, ae, oe'' and ''ue'', respectively. The two dots ( Trema ) are actually derived from a superscript lowercase E. 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. Swiss typewriters and computer keyboards do not allow easy input of uppercase umlauts (nor ''ß'') for their position is taken by the most frequent French diacritics. Because of this, 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. 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 (including the dot on ''i'' and ''j''). They might look like dots (¨), acute accents ( ̋), vertical bars ( ̎), one horizontal bar/ Macron (¯), a brevis (˘), an N or tilde (˜) etc. Sharp s Also, the ''es-zett'' or ''scharfes s'' ( ß ) is used. It exists only in a lower-case version since it can never occur at the beginning of a word. (There are very few loan words starting with ''sz'' for /s/ instead.) 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 measures) vs. ''in Massen'' (en masse). Regularisations introduced as part of the German Spelling Reform Of 1996 greatly reduced the occurrence of this letter; had it not been for those rare ambiguous cases, the character would probably have been abolished entirely. Although nowadays substituted correctly only by double ''s'', 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, incorrectly by official rules, prefer to substitute it by "sz". Long s In Fraktur and similar scripts a Long S (''ſ'') was 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. French In loan words from the French Language spelling and diacritics are usually preserved, although some are Germanised. 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 ^). Diacritic marks from other languages are often discarded, but there are only few loan words from languages that use any (Latin, latinised Greek and English being the main sources). Sorting There are three ways to deal with the umlauts in Alphabetic Sorting . # 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). # 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."). # They are treated like extra letters either placed ## after their base letters—Austrian phone books have ''ä'' between ''a'' and ''b'' etc.—or ## at the end of the alphabet (as in Swedish ), which is very uncommon. Microsoft Windows in German locale offers the choice between the first two variants in its internationalisation settings. ''Eszett'' is sorted as though it was ''ss''. Occasionally it is treated as ''s'', but this is generally considered incorrect. In rare contexts ''sch'' (equal to English ''sh'') and likewise ''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. Phonetic alphabet There is a German equivalent to the English-language NATO Phonetic Alphabet : : Anton, Berta, Cäsar, Dora, Emil, Friedrich, Gustav, Heinrich, Ida, Jaguar, Konrad, Ludwig, Martha, Nordpol (sometimes Norbert), Otto, Paula, Qual, Richard, Siegfried (Südpol), Theodor, Ulrich, Viktor, Wilhelm, Xaver, Ypsilon, Zeppelin; Ärger, Ökonom (Österreich), Übermut, CHarlotte, SCHule |