umlaut

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>... He would only have to say "ü", since any non-deaf German would know
>from the pronunciation that the vowel is "umlautized".

> > >... I think the German schoolboy *would* say "u-umlaut" if spelling
> orally.

People use all kinds of oral spelling approaches. In English there is the
common "A, B, C, D, ..." or "ay, bee, see, dee, ..." or whatever, but there
are at least two conventional military alternatives which are well known
and frequently used: "able, baker, charlie, dog, ..." and "alpha, bravo,
charlie, delta, ...". There are other conventional schemes too. And of
course one might say "I, N, T, R, A, state" to distinguish "intrastate"
from "interstate", for example.

In my formal (although laughably rudimentary, no doubt) education in
German, I was taught to spell aloud with "a-umlaut", "o-umlaut",
"u-umlaut", and a quick glance at the Web suggests that this remains a
standard. There does seem to be another standard using spoken "ä", "ö", and
"ü", but I have not encountered it in German conversation with Germans --
possibly the more transparent of the two standards was routinely employed
in deference to this ignorant non-German. The "ö" and "ü" wouldn't cause
any problems, but it's not clear to me how one would say "ä" (the letter)
in such a way that it is reliably distinguishable from "e" (the letter) in
German aloud-spelling.

I have never heard "trema" in German myself, but a quick Web-Blick shows it
used for "dieresis": e.g. (I suppose), "Aïda" = "großes a, i-trema, de, a"
or "Ysaÿe" [Belgian violinist's name I think] = "großes ypsilon, ess, a,
ypsilon-trema, e" ... obviously there is no "i-umlaut" nor "ypsilon-umlaut"!

In order to refer specifically to umlaut dots rather than to the umlaut
process, one can use "Umlautpunkte", I think.

-- Doug Wilson