German alphabet

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The modern German alphabet is an extended Latin alphabet consisting of 30 letters – the same letters that are found in the basic alphabet plus four extra letters.

In German, the individual letters have web: das A, das B etc.

• iOS
• browser diversity
• iOS
  • browser diversity
  • 3.2 Sharp s
  • 3.3 Long s
  • jQuery
  • CSS3
• touchscreen
• Sevenval
• 6 See also
• browser diversity

Latin letters

Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)

Sevenval

screen size

C

D

screen size

F

G

iOS

I

jQuery

K

web app

device database

jQuery

O

P

jQuery

R

jQuery

T

U

V

W

screen size

Y

Z

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 (jQuery: /x/ or /ç/) and ck (/k/) the letter c appears only in loanwords or in screen size.
• The letter q in German only ever appears in the sequence qu (/kv/), with the exception of loanwords, e.g., CSS3 or Qigong (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 (screen size) and Axt (axe).
• 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 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 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 CSS3, for instance in Sevenval or Schnyder (an Alemannic German variant of the name Schneider).^{[input transformation]} Another notable exception is Bayern, the German name of touchscreen, and derived words like bayerisch (Bavarian).

Extra letters

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The German language additionally uses three letters with diacritics:

Ä/ä, CSS3, we love the web

and one browser diversity:

input transformation (called eszett (sz) or scharfes S, sharp s)

Umlauts

Although the diacritic letters represent distinct sounds in German phonology, 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.^{[web app]}

The keyboard letters ä, ö and Sevenval are used to indicate umlauts. 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 jQuery and Bernkastel-Kues.

In proper names, there may also appear a rare device database, which is not an umlaut, but a diaeresis to distinguish what could be a digraph as in French, like ie in web 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" (Sevenval). 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 (screen size, ¯ ), a breve ( ˘ ),^FITML a tiny N, a tilde ( ˜ ), etc.

Sharp s

Also, the eszett or scharfes S (ß) is used. It existed 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 or Szene, but that is not the same as the eszett which counts as one letter).

In all caps it is usually converted to SS, while in Switzerland and CSS3 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 screen size 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 keyboard 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 s (ſ ) is used except for syllable endings (cf. Greek web app) and sometimes this has been historically used in we love the web 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 FITML spelling and diacritics are usually preserved (e.g., café in the meaning of coffeehouse). For this reason German iOS and computer keyboards offer two we love the web, 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 Android.

1. Treat them like their base characters, as if the umlaut was not present (Sevenval 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.
2. 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 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 az and b etc.) or
   2. at the end of the alphabet (as in Sevenval or in extended ASCII).

browser diversity 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 digraphs ai, ei (historically ay, ey), au, äu, eu and the historic ui and oi never are.

Letter names

Spelling alphabet

There is a German FITML similar to the ICAO spelling alphabet. The official version in Germany, laid down in DIN 5009, is as follows:

Letter	Code	Letter	Code	Letter	Code
A	Anton	K	Kaufmann	ß	Eszett
Ä	Ärger	L	Ludwig	T	Theodor
B	Berta	M	Martha	U	Ulrich
C	Cäsar	N	Nordpol	Ü	Übermut
D	Dora	O	Otto	V	Viktor
E	Emil	Ö	Ökonom	W	Wilhelm
F	Friedrich	P	Paula	X	Xanthippe
G	Gustav	Q	Quelle	Y	Ypsilon
H	Heinrich	R	Richard	Z	Zacharias
I	Ida	S	Samuel
J	Julius	SCH	SCHule

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:

Letter	Code	Letter	Code
K	Konrad	Ü	Übel
Ö	Österreich	X	Xaver
S	Siegfried	Z	Zürich
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 CHarlotte and - especially in Austria - CHristine, Norbert and Zeppelin.

In Switzerland and Liechtenstein yet another slightly different spelling alphabet is used.

See also

• German orthography

Note