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Let yourself be carried away by those weird, but attractive sounds, while practicing the pronunciation of words like öko (ecological), ähnlich (similar) and süß (sweet).You’ve probably seen umlauts at some point-those mysterious little dots hovering over letters in languages. If you want to learn or are already learning German, don’t worry, sometimes it is difficult even for native speakers. However, don’t let the use of the umlaut in other languages put you off. The use of the umlaut as a diacritic is present in languages such as Afrikaans and Albanian. The same Germanic sound occurs in the case of Swedish and Dutch. These last two languages will continue to present a challenge for speakers of languages in which vowels are separated and rarely slip past each other, such as Spanish. The umlaut in the vowel “o” in German “ö” is comparable to the “œ” in French. Words like œvre (work), cœur (heart) or also œil (eye) have the same sound as the “ö” in German (a handy suggestion and a great incentive in case you want to or are learning French or German). The German variant of “ö” in Danish and Norwegian is the vowel “ø”. In some ancient texts it is possible to find the letter “ö” instead of “ø” to differentiate open sounds from closed sounds. Thus, we could almost say that the “ø” is an evolution of the “oe” as in French. We have talked about the use of the umlaut in German. Now, is it just a form of writing? Does that sound exist in other languages? You are right! Here are two clear examples. Similar sounds in other languages What is umlaut in English?
![pronunciation of a with umlaut pronunciation of a with umlaut](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8BjPiQ6xrmE/maxresdefault.jpg)
What is umlaut in English? The umlaut in EnglishĮnglish also has some words with umlauts generally in names or surnames such as Zöe or Brontë. In some words its use is optional, such as naïv (naive, naive). Most of these words come from languages like French and have been responsible for enriching and expanding English throughout history. Of course, such influence often causes confusion, especially in spelling, and the umlaut is no exception. In fact, some newspapers like the New York Times justify their choice in their style guides. Thus, for example, in the word Noël (Christmas), the two dots are there to remind you that you should not merge both vowels into a single sound, but that you have to pronounce the “o” and “e” separately. While in German it means a change of sound and in Spanish it emphasizes the pronunciation of a letter, in French it is used to indicate the pronunciation of a vowel within a digraph or diphthong. In French, the word tréma (from the Greek trēma (τρῆμα) meaning “hole” or “pierce”) has the same appearance as the umlaut but a completely different purpose. What is umlaut in English? The umlaut in French
![pronunciation of a with umlaut pronunciation of a with umlaut](https://www.frathwiki.com/images/d/dc/Alefbef_1.jpg)
Commonly the representation of the umlaut is done by adding an “e” to the affected vowel, as for example for Goethe, which will never be written Göthe. It takes time to understand that the letters “ä”, “ö” and “ü” are simply sounds trapped between two vowels, even though they are considered distinct sounds and are included as individual letters in the German alphabet. One of the difficulties that those of us who have learned to speak German face is Umlaut.
![pronunciation of a with umlaut pronunciation of a with umlaut](http://thedabbler.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Motley-Crue-010.jpg)
Jacob Grimm (yes, exactly, one of the Grimm brothers) was the one who introduced the term Umlaut to German. Its meaning is “sound around” and refers to the “curve” of sound, so to speak, between one vowel and another. These two small dots are usually placed on the letters “a”, “o”, “u” and are one of the most difficult phonemes to pronounce for many. The umlaut in German combines two vowels in the same sound: The umlaut in other languages What is umlaut in English? The umlaut in German