Talk:German orthography

Orthography

This article is not about German orthography at all. (See Orthography.) It discusses phonology as related to or discernable from the spelling of a word. It might therefore make a good addition to the German phonology page.

I was about to write that. You beat me to it.

This is about orthography and letter-to-sound correspondence, which has absolutely nothing to do with phonology. I suggest that you read up on what the term actually means. I've removed the sign here and at German phonology.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:45, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

I actually agree with the anon comments. So far this article only discusses phonological notation of Standard German. An actual article on German orthography would include material along the lines of de:Deutsche Rechtschreibung, Standard_German#Orthography. I suggest we either expand it, or merge it into phonology for now, making this title a redirect to Standard German. dab (ᛏ) 10:34, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I think this page should be kept. I typed in "German Orthography" hoping for something like this and got it. 66.81.36.255 20:27, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this page needs to be merged with German phonology at all; rather, this page needs to be expanded so that it's about more than just the spelling-to-pronunciation correspondences. But this page is the correct place for those spelling-to-pronunciation correspondences, which would have no business at German phonology at all. Perhaps someone could translate de:Deutsche Rechtschreibung and add it here (while keeping the info that's already here). Angr/talk 11:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to make such an expansion of the article, and have therefore removed that merging request. ― j. 'mach' wust | ✑ 10:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

merger

I don't think that this page should merge with German phonology but I did notice that the German alphabet page seems to cover the same area as this page. One should merge into the other. This one is much more developed AEuSoes1 08:50, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization

I came to this article in the hope of finding out about rules of capitalization of German. Nothing here. As pointed out above, this article has some good stuff, but it's hardly orthography. -- Hoary 10:51, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Capitalization in German is very easy: If you could write der/die/das (i.e. the) in connection with a word it is capitalized. Example: Die Länge (the length) as opposed to lang (long).
In order to make the rule clearer, I used German capitalization in an English text:
A popular Saying in Germany is: "Breakfast like an Emperor, lunch like a King, and dine like a Beggar." Breakfast is usually a Selection of Cereals and Jam or Honey with Bread. Some Germans eat cold Meats or Cheese with Bread for Breakfast. More than 300 Types of Breads, sold in Bakery Shops, are known throughout the Country. Enka (talk) 14:34, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Your rule doesn't account for capitalization in etwas Schönes, alles Gute, gestern Abend. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 14:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm? I fail to see the problem: das Schöne, das Gute, der Abend. Or am I missing something? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:52, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Hm... I'm German and once said here on WP that German interpunctation is easy... but capitalization is, let's face it, not. That is, capitalization is easy if your goal is to get around and do most things in the correct way. Capitalize nouns and adjectives that really take the place of nouns; in case of a doubt do not capitalize. But if you want to understand things altogether... and perhaps if you even want to avoid the semi-logical but ugly forms the 1996 reform provided us with... then that's more difficult.--93.135.54.184 (talk) 11:24, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Still, there are tougher cases, eg »Ich komme um neun« (»I’ll come at nine»). »Heute Abend« (tonight) vs »abends« (in the evening). – Another difference to English is the straightforward plainly normal capitalization in English headlines, whereas English (why not »english« – or do I misspell?) headlines are a nightmare for Germans to set. — Fritz Jörn (talk) 09:01, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

In English, adjectives based on geographical entities, should be capitalized. Richard 08:29, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

And a basical rule of German would be that you don't do that. :-) --2001:A61:21AD:FA01:95A0:C7D2:6319:E458 (talk) 11:17, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

"ow" for [oː]

A lot of places in eastern Germany are spelled with "ow" for [oː], e.g. Güstrow, Pankow, Lüchow. Does this have the status of an orthographic rule, to be added to the article? Lfh (talk) 18:29, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd say this is a case of a special regional orthographic feature that departs from the normal standard. Other samples include the occasional Northwestern pronunciation of 〈ae〉, 〈oe〉, 〈ue〉 as /aː/, /oː/, /uː/ (instead of standard /ɛː/, /øː/, /yː/ – for instance in Soest, Kues or Raesfeld), or the Swiss (Southern?) pronunciation of 〈gg〉 as free vowel fortis /k/ (instead of standard checked vowel lenis /ɡ/ – for instance in Elgg or in Ringgenberg). I guess if cases like these are mentioned at all, then a special section about regional non-standard spellings should be created. -- machᵗᵃˡᵏ 10:17, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

There seem to be some orthographical subregularities found only in proper names, especially place names. Another example is the "Dehnungs-C" encountered in North German place names like Lübeck and Mecklenburg, which were originally pronounced with /e:/, although nowadays /ɛ/ is probably more common. Other letters that can be used to indicate long vowels in names include "i" (in Voigt /fo:kt/, a surname rather than a placename) and "y" (in Bad Oeynhausen /ø:nhauzən/). +Angr 10:44, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I did have a half-suspicion that Mecklenburg was with [eː]. That explains why - thanks! Perhaps the pron should be added to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. But if these "rules" only apply to proper names then let's not put them in the main table in this article, as you say. Lfh (talk) 14:31, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

There are a lot of interesting examples at de:Dehnungszeichen. +Angr 15:41, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

The c in Mecklenburg, Lübeck (?) and the like is not actually a "Dehnungs-c"; they did not put it there to indicate that the vowel is long. They put it there for the exact same reason why they put it into Bismarck ("past l, n, r be sure, I say: there's no tz, there's no ck"); because they liked not to be stingy with letters: only the e's in question are long nevertheless, and because for some reason they did not go the whole hog and write "Meecklenburg", we confuse that now with our brevity-marker and read the vowels as short. (Which is why when a typical Hanseatic family name would be Buddenbrock, spoken as if it were *Buddenbrook, Thomas Mann actually took the unusual latter one for his saga to make sure these ignorant non-Northerners would not constantly mispronounce it.)--2001:A61:20C0:A601:C803:C1FE:37CB:14D9 (talk) 10:11, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Punctuation

Since orthography includes punctuation, that should be covered by the article as well. -- Beland (talk) 14:27, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Main difference: no comma before and in a sequence, eg »Äpfel, Birnen und andere Früchte« (vs apples, pears, and other fruit).  No second space at start of new sentence, but this (oldfashioned?) rule seems to vanish in English as well. – Fritz Jörn (talk) 09:08, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

That extra comma is not used by everyone. See comma#in lists and serial comma. Richard 08:33, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

It would be good to say something about the „double quotes“ as well. 2A02:8109:9200:7F58:CD72:DA4B:A4C2:B214 (talk) 22:47, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Added information about punctuation. Burzuchius (talk) 19:26, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation

The plosives in German(p,t,k) are aspirated when they are followed by a vowel but there's no mark on that.

Michster (talk) 23:09, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

This is an article on orthography, not phonology. German phonology is the place to discuss that sort of thing. Angr (talk) 10:45, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Might be but why then such details by b or pf, as an example? Michster (talk) 21:49, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Good point. The section should really be edited to indicate phonemes rather than surface phones. Angr (talk) 21:58, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Typing Umlauts

 Somewhere you might like to help people with English keyboards. In Windows you get
ü with Alt129
Ü with Alt154
ö with Alt148
Ö with Alt153
ä with Alt132
Ä with Alt142
ß with Alt225
NumLock must be on.
 Users of Apple might want to try Altu (which gives you a ¨) followed by u, o, etc. or s. Works for capitals as well. – Fritz Jörn (talk) 10:35, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

On an American keyboard in international lay-out, one can type a double quote (", which will not appear) followed by a letter. If dots can be placed on the letter, it will result in one glyph (e.g. "a will result in ä, "e in ë, "i in ï, "o in ö, "u in ü). If not, the two will both appear ("x). To input a double quote by itself (or followed by a letter on which dots would be possible but are not desired), one can type double quote followed by a space: " <space> a will result in "a. Similar effect can be achieved with single quotes ('), backquotes (`) and tildes (~). Also, the 'alt' key on the right hand side of the keyboard (sometimes labeled 'alt gr') can be used to enter some extra charactersr. alt gr+s will result in ß. Richard 08:23, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

If I understand the system of the alt codes correctly, then suggesting the codes with a leading zero would be safer (for instance the sequence Alt, 0, 2, 5, and 2 for producing ⟨ü⟩). The alt codes that do not use the leading zero refer to the current code page, so in some cases, they might produce other characters. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 11:23, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Yet another reason why I don't use alt codes ;) Richard 12:25, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

PS: {{key press}} was just the template I was looking for... thanks! Richard 12:25, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Long s (ſ)

I don't think mentioning the obsolete long ſ in the "Special characters" section is really appropriate, as this letter was actually used throughout Europe. I've made a footnote citing Andrew West's blog entry The Rules for Long S. Anyway, long ſ is not exactly a letter that's special to German, yet I'm not sure how to handle this, as a lot of people believe it is something typically German. What do you think, Richardw and the others? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 13:14, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I know it was not used exclusively in German, but that is not what the article mentions. The article simply says that it was used in German, and that is as true as true can be. The ligature ß has been used in languages other than German. Is that a reason not to mention ß? I think not. Why refrain from mentioning ſ earlier on? If it was to be removed there, the chapter on that letter should be removed as well. I think it should not be removed - not the single mentioning nor the chapter. Richard 13:32, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

A lot of letters were used historically in German and other languages including Latin, Dutch, English, Portuguese etc. So why don't we mention ʒ for instance, or vowels with a tilde above them? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 13:41, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

P.S.: I'm not saying it has to be deleted. There still seems to be a very small user group of Germans who use long ſ in Fraktur typesetting. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 13:56, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I have never seen a text (of reasonable length) in Fraktur that didn't use long s where appropriate. Then again, these texts usually use a tz-ligature as well. Richard 14:08, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm past 50, and next to no Germans of my generation can read Fraktur. However I'm in favour of including it, but with the caveat that it now has a similar status in German as in English: obsolete, something for scholars and a handful of enthusiasts. Plus Nazis, who rarely know the rules of usage though and often replace long ſ with final s or the other way round. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 14:23, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

That sounds familiair. Some German acquaintances of mine were astonished to find out that I can read Fraktur rather easily (in running texts, that is). Sütterlin, now there's a challenge ;) Richard 14:32, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

My mother wrote Sütterlin, and I often was unsure what she had written on her shopping lists... Well, I can read it, but it takes me some time — sometimes. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 14:39, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I think the difference between German and other language is that in German, the long ſ was used well into the 20th century. Its usage was closely tied to blackletter: While there was blackletter, there was the long ſ. In antiqua, the long ſ had disappeared in the early 19th century, similar if a bit later to the Western European languages. So the unusually long persistence of long ſ in German was not the persistence of a curious oddball letter per se, but rather the persistence of the blackletter script along with all its typographic features, among which was the long ſ. I think that is the context where we should mention the long ſ.

BTW, it is a strange thing that the blackletter ſz ligature spilled over from blackletter into antiqua to form the letter ß. This only happened after the Prusso-German empire had been founded, at a time when the long ſ had no longer been used in antiqua for many decades. In a certain sense, the letter ß could be considered a blackletter contamination. ;-) --mach 🙈🙉🙊 19:36, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

"Next to no Germans of my generation can read Fraktur". Excuse me. Next to no German of your (and of my) generation is used to reading Fraktur, but it's not terribly difficult. Sütterlin and similar handwritings, now, that's another story.--131.159.76.231 (talk) 10:06, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

My understanding is that it is being pointed out that the long s had a particular significance in German, as it was used to indicate important distinctions, whereas in other languages it simply indicated that the letter s was not at the end of a word. Quadibloc (talk) 17:04, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

It wasn't strictly speaking used to indicate important distinctions. It was used, not to indicate the end of a word, but equally straightforwardly to indicate the end of a unit, with (needless to say) some difficulties in the detail (is it now Diſſonanz or Disſonanz). It was a welcome side-effect that this, also, cleared up some distinctions (as in the schoolbook example Wachſtube vs. Wachstube), but these distinctions are not really important and could have been achieved by other means (such as hyphens).--2001:A61:260D:6E01:A865:1FCA:DA8A:D95E (talk) 20:47, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Alphabet incomplete

German Wiki states the following order ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÄÖÜß the last letter is called "etzet" and formally only exists as a small letter. It is used instead of "ss" (and can hence never be the first letter of any word), in some cases. One example "street" - "Straße" which could possibly be spelled "Strasse" , but rarely is. But in the case of the city Essen, is it a clear error to use this letter. I guess the ISO-standard has nothing to do with the actual spelling in German. And also Ä,Ö and Ü are considered as letters (not A,O and U's with "dots on top"). Boeing720 (talk) 23:56, 12 March 2017 (UTC) And please show me a source which states Ä, Ö, Ü and ß to be "special" - in the German language, which is the topic, obviously. Boeing720 (talk) 00:49, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Stating something to be obvious is often a sign of lack of proof. The references you provided are the German Wikipedia and spelltool.com, which in turn is based on that same Wikipedia. The German Wikipedia is just as easily modified as the English. If I would make an edit to show that Å/å was part of the German alphabet and if that edit would go unnoticed, would that make it true? In other words, is Wikipedia a reliable source?

The 'ß', which by the way is called Eszett and not etzet, is never a replacement of ss. Just the opposite: if 'ß' is unavailable, it may be replaced by 'ss'.

The sentences you inserted, were of dubious quality and after insertion, the article was internally inconsistent. I have removed them – for now.

The article stated (states) that German uses the basic 26 letter alphabet and four special characters (special meaning: not part of the basic alphabet) and that these special characters do not constitute distinct letters. That last part is, in my opinion, the main reason behind your concerns. I tend to agree that these characters act as letters and have requested a source for the remark that they actually are not. Should no such source be found, I propose the remark to be struck and the article rephrased to reflect that change.

Meanwhile, you might want to take a look at this web page, which might be helpful in rephrasing the article if and when the time comes. Richard 09:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. I first had a look at the your given source. Paragraph 25 states

"§ 25 Für das scharfe (stimmlose) [s] nach langem Vokal oder Diphthong schreibt man ß, wenn im Wortstamm kein weiterer Konsonant folgt."

Would I translate to "For the sharp (toneless) [s] after long vowel or diphthong does one write ß, when no further consonant is following in the 'word stem'"

Examples given are "Maß, Straße, Grieß, Spieß, groß, grüßen; außen, außer, draußen, Strauß, beißen, Fleiß, heißen"

And

"In manchen Wortstämmen wechselt bei Flexion und in Ableitungen die Länge und Kürze des Vokals vor [s]; entsprechend wechselt die Schreibung ß mit ss. Beispiele:"

Which I would say means something like

"(In) Some 'word stems' change with flexion and derivatives the length and brevity of the vowel before [s]; change the spelling β with ss" (close at least)

Examples: "fließen – er floss – Fluss – das Floß, genießen – er genoss – Genuss, wissen – er weiß – er wusste"

In an approximation would I say that '"ß" is like "ss"' (but ok not the ultimate truth). I do however think our readers ought to know something about :::how it's pronounced. And I cannot find any support for the German alphabet to not count ß, Ä,Ö and Ü as proper letters of the German alphabet. This isn't about keyboard standards, but about the German language. And as I wrote, the sorting order is DIN 5009 standard [1]. Can that really be disregarded from ? And about taught, is "Ä" and "Ö" exactly as in Swedish (or "Æ" and "Ø" in Danish and Norwegian). And the Ü is for instance found in Bayern München and is pronounced just like "y" in "Lynn" (but OK it isn't optimal to use a name) I must have been ill that day in school when "phonetic letters" was taught, by the way. But I don't think I'm alone about that, and I feel our readers should be given a possibility to understand the pronunciation. More importantly is however the suggestion that ß, Ä,Ö and Ü are "special letters" from the perspective of the article and without any source. How can they appear in the sorting order if they are not ? And German Wiki includes them, in a different sorting order , but still Boeing720 (talk) 20:54, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Have you read de:Deutsches Alphabet#Umstrittene Zahl der Buchstaben and de:Alphabetische Sortierung#Deutsche Sprache? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:12, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Saying that 'ß' behaves as 'ss' would be acceptable. I still have reservations concerning the page on spelltool.com, since it is partly based on Wikipedia. The pages LiliCharlie points out should not be used as a source either, but they might contain sources that we could use. It's too bad that http://wolfgang-schindler.userweb.mwn.de/skripte/vl-ortho-14.pdf is no longer available. Concerning the pronunciation of 'ä', 'ö', 'ü' and 'ß': the example you give is flawed since the 'ü' in 'München' is not pronounced like the 'y' in 'Lynn' – at the very least not by everyone. The IPA was created to be able to give a non-ambiguous representation of a pronunciation. The pronunciation of 'ä', 'ö', 'ü' is already given: /ɛː/, /øː/, /yː/. As far as I know, /ɛː/ and /øː/ are the right pronunciation for Swedish 'ä/ö' and Danish/Norwegian 'æ/ø' as well, but I don't really speak those languages. As to the idea that 'there are rules for sorting 'ä', 'ö' and 'ü', so they must be letters': if they were integral part of the alphabet, there might be fewer ways to sort them. For instance: no one doubts that 'b' comes between 'a' and 'c', but depending on context 'ä' might come between 'a' and 'b' or after 'z'. Just a thought. Richard 09:46, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

The document you said was no longer available is archived here. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:25, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. I had not taken the time to check there (yet). Richard 09:49, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Well the first German wiki statement tells me that this matter "isn't sharp". And in the lead, are all letters included de:Deutsches Alphabet. But they don't use sources as much as here. In this case presumably due to the "well-known"-factor, so to speak. Richard have you studied German ? I have studied it in primary school only (and I just couldn't stand the grammar). But I have visited Germany (including GDR !) and if the "Ü" doesn't sound like "y" in "Lynn" (in "München" as in "Glück") in general, as an explanation, then I must be Donald Duck ! I'm very uncertain if even 10% of our readers understand /ɛː/, /øː/, /yː/ . (but the DIN 5009 standard is a valid source, I think). I would especially like a stone-proof source for "special letter" part. However perhaps we should agree to disagree "for now". Thanks for the discussion, however. Both of you. Boeing720 (talk) 12:11, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

DIN 5007-1 and DIN 5007-2 (which you probably mean, not DIN 5009: Rules for dictation) are German industrial standards. They are therefore not a valid standard in the German speaking world outside Germany. DIN 5007-1 treats ä, ö, ü the same as a, o, u whereas DIN 5007-2 treats them like ae, oe, ue.

According to my 2005 edition of Duden: Das Aussprachewörterbuch the pronunciation of Lynn is [lɪn] but München and Glück are [ˈmʏnçn̩] and [ɡlʏk] respectively. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 16:50, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

About "Lynn", - now you are using the German pronounce of that name ! I meant the German "Ü" / "ü" is pronounced LIKE the name "Lynn" - in Enlish. But you are now discussing how the same name is pronounced in German. Obviously not quite the same ? Take Lynn Anderson for example, like her name was pronounced, that "y" equals "ü" in German. The last DIN-standard you refer to is presumably from the days of Teleprinters , if spelling Austria (Österreich in German), in a teleprinter message from any German speaking person to the UK or elsewhere, where English is used - couldn't any one be certain of what letter that was written in the other end. For such matters was DIN 5007-2 recommended. That's my guess, at least. That standard has grown very old by now. And I strongly doubt if the DIN 5007-1 rules out ä, ö, ü as actual letters. Now I have to take a break, on early Friday am I coming to London for a week. We've got tickets for West Ham vs Leicester, the champions soon no longer. But if nothing goes totally wrong am I back the Saturday thereafter. Cheers and over and out, for now. Boeing720 (talk) 02:37, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

The German pronunciation of 'ü' is, in my opinion, not like 'y' in English "Lynn" (although in some German words, the 'y' is pronounced the same way as 'ü' – but that would be a German pronunciation and not an English one). From the top of my head, I can't come up with English words featuring that sound. After writing the previous sentences, I did a quick search on Google and came upon this page, which is titled 'There is no ü sound in the English language'. Richard 09:49, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

This is my personal view as someone who grew up speaking German from an early age: All short realizations of English /ɪ/ will be understood by German native speakers as representing German /ɪ/. To me the front-ish Australian and New Zealand [ɪ] sounds are indistinguishable from Standard German [ɪ], but the backer and often opener sounds of other English accents are also common in regional German accents and will generally pass unnoticed. — The only English sound that reminds German speakers of their /ʏ/ or /yː/ are Scottish realizations [ʉ(ː)] of /u/ (corresponding to /uː~ʊ/ in most other English accents), as central realizations of the two German phonemes are found in a few regional accents. (This is why speakers of German are usually unable to tell Swedish or Norwegian /yː/ from /ʉː/.)

DIN 5007-2 was not designed for international interchange but is primarily used in German telephone directories and other name lists. Even an ö in (for instance) a Turkish or a Swedish name will be sorted after od and before of, though it is still written ö and not oe. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:16, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Any statement such as 'there is no ü sound in the English language' just makes no sense. It depends on the accent. Australian English, for example, has a /uː/ that is often fronted beyond the usual [ʉː] to [yː]. In Scottish English, a vowel that corresponds to /uː/ and /ʊ/ in other dialects can be central [ʉ] or front [ʏ ~ y], depending on the speaker. Both of these are equally as standard as Received Pronunciation or General American; Australian is also one of the major varieties of English. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:35, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Just to be clear: that statement is not mine. Richard 08:33, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I see that. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:25, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Abel or Adelard

This article refers to there being two main ways to spell German, the Heyes fashion and the Abel fashion. Another article, on the history of the eszett, contrasts the Heyes orthography with the Adelung orthography. Perhaps the Heyes orthography had two different rivals in two different historical periods, but without additional details I begin to suspect a typographical error. Quadibloc (talk) 17:07, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

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Shortcut

Can learn the IPA and compare with historical and prehistorical usage. this applies with Armenian as well. RCNesland (talk) 13:06, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea what you're getting at... Richard 08:37, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Letter names

Shouldn't the names of the letters all be capitalised? 2WR1 (talk) 20:03, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Probably. However I don't think we should give German spellings of letter names at all, simply because they don't have a fixed spelling. See, for instance, the table Buchstabieren mit den Namen der Buchstaben by Wortwuchs, where spellings found in common dictionaries are formatted in bold.

Besides, the recent edit by user VicFlirt (who also changed de:Deutsches Alphabet accordingly) makes users believe that the letters ⟨j⟩ and ⟨q⟩ carry different names in Austria and Germany, instead of in Austria and elsewhere, though with exceptions for Austria. The information given before their edit was more detailed, and true. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 22:10, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@LiliCharlie: I mean, just because there are variant spellings for the letter names doesn't mean they shouldn't be mentioned. They have names which can be spelt, maybe that should be mentioned somewhere in the page and the fat that there are variants can be shown. I get that it's complicated though. 2WR1 (talk) 23:04, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

The usual spellings are actually the iconic A, B, C, D [aː beː t͡seː deː], etc., which parallel the English a, b, c, d /eɪ biː siː diː/. Most people would write z and leave it to the reader to pronounce this as /zɛd/ or as /ziː/. Similarly, German J and Q are not pronounced the same everywhere, but different pronunciations do not entail different spellings. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 23:47, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

@LiliCharlie: ya, I get that, most languages just use the letter on its own to be pronounced out with its name. But the spelled out version of the letter names still exists, english has "a, bee, cee, dee, e, ef, gee.." French has "a, bé, cé, dé, e, effe, gé..." etc. even if they're not super commonly used. So I still think it's something of note that's worth mentioning. 2WR1 (talk) 23:55, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Umlauted vowels as letters

I removed the text claiming that the Rat fuer deutsche Rechtschreibung considers these "official letters". The text there says: Die Umlautbuchstaben ä, ö, ü werden im Folgenden mit den Buchstaben a, o, u zusammen eingeordnet; ß nach ss. This does not imply that they are considered official letters, especially considering that they can all be replaced under certain circumstances and are alphabetized with the letter they are modified from.--Ermenrich (talk) 23:22, 11 September 2023 (UTC)