Umlaut

The Swedish alphabet is similar to the English alphabet, but has three more letters: Å, Ä and Ö. In alphabetical order, these letters are at the end of the alphabet, after the letter Z and in that order). ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÅÄÖ. For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet Since Å, Ä and Ö are letters with a distinct sound, not an A or an O with an accent, it is best to keep it when referring to Scandinavian words and names in other languages. Otherwise you might end up with a totally different word or a word that do not exist. This is especially important with names of people or names of places. If you type a name of a place that do have dots above an A or an O without the dots you might end up with another place that also exists. Å, Ä and Ö do not mark grammatical variation as the umlaut does in the German alphabet, or separate syllables, as does the dieresis; therefore it is not correct to call them umlauts, despite the lack of a better term in English.

Å, Ä and Ö

• Å: A with a ring. Pronounced as the English "o" as in "for". • Ä: A with two dots. Pronounced as the English "ai" as in "fair. • Ö: O with two dots. Pronounced roughly like the English "u" as in "turn".

On the keyboard - PC:

Hold down Alt and press nnn or nnnn on the numeric keypad (NumLock enabled) as shown below. • å: Alt key + 134 or Alt + 0229 • Å: Alt key + 143 or Alt + 0197 • ä: Alt key + 132 or Alt + 0228 • Ä: Alt key + 142 or Alt + 0196 • ö: Alt key + 148 or Alt + 0246 • Ö: Alt key + 153 or Alt + 0214

On the keyboard - Mac:

• å: Press Option and the letter "a" for lower case å • Å: Press Option, Shift, and the letter "a" for a capital Å • ä: Press and release Option and the letter "U". Press the letter "a" for a lower case ä • Ä: Press and release Option and the letter "U". Press Shift and the letter "a" for an upper case Ä • ö: Press and release Option and the letter "U". Press the letter "o" for a lower case ö • Ö: Press and release Option and the letter "U". Press Shift and the letter o for an upper case Ö

Keep the spelling correct

Names of places

You can end up with a different name of a place if you omit the dots/ring above the A and O. For example, if you post a query about an ancestor from Böda and in the query write Boda you might lead the people that are trying to help you on the wrong track since there are places called Boda as well as Böda. If you are looking for information about Böda you also must spell it Böda and not Boda. Another example is the two places Hallaryd and Hällaryd. Both these two places exist, but one is spelled with an "ä" and the other with an "a". A similar example is Lovön respective Lövön. There is, as far as I know, no place called Lovon but it is difficult to know if you by Lovon mean Lovön or Lövön.

Names of people

There are several names in this category where you get different names depending how you use the umlauts. For example, Jonsson vs Jönsson, Mollberg vs Möllberg, Hallberg vs Hällberg, Marta vs Märta, etc.

Different meaning

There are many words with the same spelling except for the dots/ring above the A:s and O:s but with a totally different meaning. For example:

Acute Accent - é

The acute accent marks the stressed vowel of a word in several languages. In Swedish the acute accent is used to indicate that a terminal syllable with the vowel e is stressed. Often this is used for Swedish word with a French origin. For example: • Filé – Fillet [of beef] • Café – Coffee bar • Paté - Paté This is also the case with some names of people: • André (a first name) • Iréne (a first name) • Rahmé (a last name) However, in some words the acute accent is also needed to differentiate two words from each other. For Example • Armen (first syllable stressed) – The arm (body part) • Armén – The Army • Ide (first syllable stressed) – A bear’s winter quater • Idé - Idea Because keyboards have only a limited number of keys, English keyboards do not have keys for accented characters.

Windows

On Windows computers, letters with acute accents can be created by holding down the Alt key and typing in a three or a four-number code on the number pad to the right of the keyboard before releasing the Alt key. • é: Alt key + 130 or Alt + 0233 • É: Alt key + 144 or Alt + 0201 Many laptops do not have a separate numeric keypad; however, the Fn key can be used to turn certain keys into a numeric keypad. There usually is a key called [Num lock] to ‘shift’ certain keys to act as if they were the numeric keypad keys.

Mac

• é: Hold down the Option key and type an "e", release the keys, and type another "e". • É: Hold down the Option key and type an "e", release the keys, hold down the Shift key and type another "e".

Source References

• Augustana College • http://swedish.typeit.org/ Top of page