One result of the orthographic reforms has been that the letters 'ss' are now used after short vowels in words where the /s/ phoneme was previously represented by the 'ß' character. The recent spelling reforms in the German-speaking countries have both simplified and reduced the usage of 'ß'. If you are using Microsoft Windows, either hold down Alt and type 225 on your numeric keypad, or hold down Alt and type 0223. Whereas 'ß' is of course present on computer keyboards in Germany and Austria, English-speakers will need to press a combination of keys to produce the character. When you are writing in capital letters, 'ß' is always replaced by "SS" - 'ß' is the only German letter that only exists in the lower case. When used in words, it sounds exactly like "ss". German has an additional character 'ß', which is either called eszett (pronounced "ess-tsett") or 'scharfes s'. Simply hold down the Alt and type in the appropriate number using the numeric keypad.
#A with umlaut pronunciation german windows#
The key combination required by Microsoft Windows users in order to produce these characters is also given. The table below gives links to the pages for these umlauted vowel sounds in my online German pronunciation guide, and also for the diphthong 'ä'.
Their pronunciation must be learned separately, not least because umlaut sounds appear in a number of very common German words and as a marker of the plural. The literal meaning of umlaut is 'altered sound' and it is therefore fitting that the sounds represented by the three umlauted German vowels are very different from non-umlauted 'a', 'o' and 'u'. As well as the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, the German language is also characterised by the umlaut, a diacritic in the form of two dots which can be placed over the letters 'a', 'o' and 'u' to form 'ä', 'ö' and 'ü'.
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