umlauts
Paired dots above
Umlauts are the two dots placed over a vowel in German and other languages, indicating a change in pronunciation: ä, ö, ü.
The term also refers to the vowel shift itself—a historical sound change where back vowels moved forward under the influence of a following sound.
In English, umlaut appears mostly in borrowed words like Fräulein or in heavy metal band names, where the dots signal foreignness or intensity: Mötley Crüe.
Vowel separation mark
- accent marksCharacters altering pronunciation
- pronunciationManner of speaking words
- orthographyStandard writing conventions
- typographyArranging letters for display
glyph · dots · diacritical marks · grapheme · transliteration · encoding · character set · special characters
Vowel gradation in morphology
- mutationPermanent DNA alteration
- phonologyScience of language sounds
- morphologyStudy of structural forms
- German grammarLinguistic rules of Deutschland
diaeresis
Vowel separation mark
- accent marksCharacters altering pronunciation
- pronunciationManner of speaking words
- orthographyStandard writing conventions
typography · glyph · dots · diacritical marks · grapheme · transliteration · encoding · character set · special characters · keyboard shortcuts
ablaut
Vowel gradation in morphology
- mutationPermanent DNA alteration
- phonologyScience of language sounds
- morphologyStudy of structural forms
- lettersa, d, e, h, q
- GermanGermany, Austria, Switzerland, German, Berlin
- GermanyBerlin, Munich, Hamburg, Germany, German
- writing rulespunctuation, capitalization, spelling, apostrophes, commas
- written symbolsletters, alphabets, punctuation, commas, periods
- Swedishdefinite articles, indefinite articles, conjugation, declension, tack