What are those two little dots that are sometimes above the letters U and O?

Question

What are they called? what do they mean? and how do I get them when typing?

thanks :)

Answer 1

They are called umlauts. The previous respondent is wrong: they are not French, they are solely German (and perhaps Scandinavian).

You can type them using the keyboard, if you have the correct "extended ASCII set enabled". You hold down ALT-SHIFT-number where "number" is typed on the numeric pad, NOT the numbers across the top of the keyboard.

The extended ASCII set contains the characters necessary for most European languages (French, German, Scandinavian, Romanian) with non-Latin (A-Z a-z) letters. For Cyrillic characters (Greek, Russian, et al) specific fonts and character sets are required.


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Answer 2

I can only speak about German here.

The two dots are pronounciation signs over a, o, and u
The German standard is to replace the 2 dots with the letter "e" behind the vowel if your font does not have them. You can't just type the "naked" letter without altering the meaning of words.

In other languages, as far as I know, the dots are used to show that two vowels beside each other are not a diphtong, but separate sounds. In English they sometimes are used to show that an otherwise mute "e" should be pronounced.

Answer 3

Depend in which language.

In german, as said before, umlauts. It changes the sound of the letter.

In french, tréma.

In hungarian, you have 2 kinds: double dots and something more like a double quote on the letter.

All these are diacritic signs, they are used to change the way the letter is pronounced. In english you don't have that, because anyway there are no rules to pronounce any letter.

Answer 4

I believe the two dots is an Umlaut when speaking of Germanic vowels, or more generally speaking, a diaeresis.

ü = Alt+0252
ö = Alt+0246
The numerals must be entered from the keypad.

Use the program Character Map to see them all.

Answer 5

these two dots make them different letters in some languages; i.e. Turkish.
they are wovels too and they make such a difference;
o - as in born
ö - as in purr

u - as in u
ü - as in nuisance

if you are using an english keyboard i dont think you can find them on the pad but they must be available in the wingdnings font type.

Answer 6

The two dots are NOT called "umlaut". They are called "dieresis". "Umlaut" is the process in Germanic languages by which a back vowel in certain nouns is fronted to form plural. The dieresis is used to MARK umlaut on the vowel. ü is typed by ALT-0252, ö is typed by ALT-0246, ä is typed by ALT-0228

Answer 7

They are called "umlaut". They work differently in different languages. In German, ä, ö and ü sound differently from a, o and u. In Spanish and Portuguese, ü in güe and güi do sound as opposed to gue, gui where it is silent (as in English in "guess" and "guitar"). In French, an umlaut in the second vowel of any diphthong makes each letter be said separately, as opposed to the same diphthong without the umlaut which has a pronunciation of its own. Eg.: "au" sounds like an "aw" in "LAW", whereas "aü" sounds like an "a" in "idea" plus a French "u" sound.

Answer 8

Ü Ö alt 154 alt 153 the big smile, the O'really smile.

Answer 9

Umlaut, you can sometimes get them by first typing a " and then typing the vowel.

But it doesnt always work.

"U.
See, it doesn't work here either.

Answer 10

umm... thats not part of the english language. but it is in french and german.