About German Special Character

German uses all 26 letters of the Modern Roman Alphabet, and adds three modified letters: <ä>, <ö> and <ü>, in addition to the additional letter <ß> for the voiceless <s>, in cases where confusion could arise. As the letter <ß> is never used in initial position, there is no capital equivalent and it is then either replaced by <SZ> , or now more commonly by <SS>. The 2 dots over the a, o, and u are called an “Umlaut.” The ß is called an “Eszett” or sharp s, pronounced “essett”.

These are not just accents, but are indeed letters. German has the letter “a” and the letter “ä.” These letters are pronounced as differently as “e” and “u” are pronounced in English. They are not interchangeable.

When speaking these letters (i.e. on the phone, spelling out a word), one would say: “a umlaut” “o umlaut” “u umlaut” “Eszett”

ENGLISH SPELLING OF LETTERS THAT IS ACCEPTABLE IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE:

ä = ae ö = oe ü = ue ß = ss

There are 2 ways to type these letters:

ADAPTING YOUR COMPUTER KEYBOARD
USING KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
These charts and more can be found here.