The German Alphabet (das deutsche Alphabet)

The alphabet

The German alphabet is very similar to that of English but it has four letters that English does not have: ä, ö, ü and ß.

In English, to make the pronunciation and spelling of a word clear, we say "B as in burger" but in German they use names to spell and those names are fixed.

Letter	Pronunciation	Word
a	[a:]	Anton
b	[be:]	Berta
c	[tse:]	Cäsar
d	[de:]	Dora
e	[e:]	Emil
f	[εf]	Friedrich
g	[ge:]	Gustav
h	[ha:]	Heinrich
i	[i:]	Ida
j	[jοt]	Julius
k	[ka:]	Kaufmann
l	[εl]	Ludwig
m	[εm]	Martha
n	[εn]	Nordpol
o	[o:]	Otto
p	[pe:]	Paula
q	[ku:]	Quelle
r	[εr:]	Richard
s	[εs]	Samuel
t	[te:]	Theodor
u	[u:]	Ulrich
v	[fau:]	Viktor
w	[ve:]	Wilhelm
x	[iks]	Xanthippe
y	[ypsilεn]	Ypsilon
z	[tsεt]	Zacharias
ä	A-Umlaut	Ärger
ö	O-Umlaut	Ökonom
ü	U-Umlaut	Übermut
ß	Eszett or scharfes S	--

the ß does not exist in Swiss German and is substituted for with ss.
Do not confuse ß (Eszett) with β (beta).
If your keyboard does not have ä, ö, ü and ß, you can use ae, oe, ue and ss instead, respectively.

List of punctuation signs and writing symbols

It is very useful to know how to say the following in German: Punctuation signs, different parenthesis and some symbols frequently used such as the at sign and asterisk.

	Zeichen	sign
.	der Punkt	point
,	das Komma	comma
;	das Semikolon	semicolon
:	der Doppelpunkt das Kolon	colon
...	die Auslassungspunkte	ellipsis
?	das Fragezeichen	question mark
!	das Ausrufezeichen	exclamation mark
"	das Anführungzeichen	quotation marks
'	der Apostroph	apostrophe
	das Leerzeichen	space
( ) ( )	die (runde) Klammern die linke Klammer die Klammer auf die rechte Klammer die Klammer zu	parentheses the left parentheses opening parentheses the right parentheses closing parentheses
[ ]	die eckigen Klammern	square brackets
< >	die spitzen Klammern	inequality signs
{ }	die geschweiften Klammern die geschwungenen Klammern	curly brackets
/	der Schrägstrich	slash
\	der umgekehrte Schrägstrich	backslash
_	der Unterstrich	understrike
-	der Viertelgeviertstrich	hyphen
\|	der senkrechte Strich	pipe
@	das At-Zeichen	at sign
#	das Rautenzeichen	number sign
&	das Et-Zeichen das Kaufmannsund	ampersand
~	die Tilde	tilde
*	das Sternchen der Asteriskus	asterisk
´	der Akut	acute accent

The hyphen and its functions

The typographical sign hyphen "-" is called the following in German:

der Viertelgeviertstrich

The same typographical sign has a different name depending on its function:

der Bindestrich. Hyphen for joining 2 words. Ex: die E-Mail, Baden-Wurtemberg
der Trennstrich. Hyphen for dividing a word when it doesn't fit on one line.
der Ergänzungsstrich. Hyphen for indicating that part of a word has been omitted because it was redundant. Ex: Ein- und Ausgänge (instead of saying Eingänge und Ausgänge)

Quotation marks in German

When putting a text in Germany and in Austria in quotation marks, it is preferable to use the symbol „ (Anführungszeichen unten) when starting an expression and the symbol ” (Anführungszeichen oben) when finishing it.

Descartes sagte: „Ich denke, also bin ich”
Descartes said: "I think, therefore I am"

As you can see that the quotation marks in German start on the bottom and finish on top, compared to the top only in English

Less often, the single quotation marks are also used:

Descartes sagte: ‚Ich denke, also bin ich‘

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