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German ö, ä and ü | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Eagle32 Groupie New Zealand Joined 6502 days ago 56 posts - 83 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 12 10 February 2012 at 6:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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I see the German ö, ä and ü being replaced with the digraphs oe, ae and ue respectively some of the time.
If I understand correctly the above replacement with digraphs can always be made as needed (for example if a font is missing those characters). Is the inverse true? Is every occurrence of oe an ö? and likewise for the others? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5345 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 2 of 12 10 February 2012 at 10:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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ß = ss
ä = ae ü = ue ö = oe 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4750 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 3 of 12 10 February 2012 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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There is no ß is Standard Swiss German.
As for ä = ae ü = ue ö = oe they are only spelled like this if the font/typeface/keyboard lacks the German letters. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 4 of 12 10 February 2012 at 10:33am | IP Logged | |||||
Generally speaking yes, however, there are a number of word in which "oe" and "ue" do not represent an Umlaut. For example: zuerst (= at first) does not stand for *zürst soeben (= just) does not stand for *söben This means that it's not possible to globally replace all occurrences of "oe" and "ue" with "ö" and "ü" to fix umlaut issues. "ae", "oe" and "ue" also need to be maintained in proper names. For example, don't write J.W. von Goethe's last name as *Göthe. BTW, since there's no capital "ß," "SS" is mandatory for capitalized German words containing an "ß" (except for capitalized proper names in legal documents). However, most Germans don't even realize that there's no capital "ß" and you're more likely to see "SOßE" than the correct "SOSSE." Edited by Doitsujin on 10 February 2012 at 7:05pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5035 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 12 10 February 2012 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A tangent: This convention is standard in German, but it is NOT in Finnish. It's funny when I see Finnish athletes going to sporting events, and on the score boards they will have their names written out like Maeki, instead of Mäki, and so on.
I only mention it here because I found it both amusing and a little frustrating that the German convention is assumed for other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 6 of 12 10 February 2012 at 6:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
So how did Finns write ä and ü in telegrams and on the Internet before the introduction of Unicode and NLS? Edited by Doitsujin on 10 February 2012 at 7:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 7 of 12 10 February 2012 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
With the exception of SOME proper names, you mean? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any other names that don't use an umlaut, but plenty that do. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 8 of 12 10 February 2012 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
You're right in that there aren't that many proper German names with "oe", "ue" and "ae" (e.g. Goethe), but they do exist and if they were originally intentionally written like that, the spelling needs to be maintained. The same goes, BTW, for "ß" in the proper names such as Litfaßsäule (=advertising/morris column), which was invented by Ernst Litfaß. (Post spelling reform German orthography would normally require *Litfasssäule.) Edited by Doitsujin on 10 February 2012 at 7:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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