German orthography

German has four special letters; three are vowels accented with an umlaut sign (⟨ä, ö, ü⟩) and one is derived from a ligature of ⟨ſ⟩ (long s) and ⟨z⟩ (⟨ß⟩; called Eszett "ess-zed/zee" or scharfes S "sharp s").

This should never be changed to das neü Buch, as the second ⟨e⟩ is completely separate from the ⟨u⟩ and does not even belong in the same syllable; neue ([ˈnɔʏ.ə]) is neu (the root for "new") followed by ⟨e⟩, an inflection.

Swiss keyboards and typewriters do not allow easy input of uppercase letters with umlauts (nor ⟨ß⟩) because their positions are taken by the most frequent French diacritics.

Unlike in Hungarian, the exact shape of the umlaut diacritics – especially when handwritten – is not important, because they are the only ones in the language (not counting the tittle on ⟨i⟩ and ⟨j⟩).

A horizontal bar (macron, ⟨¯⟩), a breve (⟨˘⟩), a tiny ⟨N⟩ or ⟨e⟩, a tilde (⟨˜⟩), and such variations are often used in stylized writing (e.g. logos).

This transcription can give rise to ambiguities, albeit rarely; one such case is in Maßen "in moderation" vs. in Massen "en masse".

The word with ⟨ß⟩ gets precedence, and Geschoß (story of a building; South German pronunciation) would be sorted before Geschoss (projectile).

The transcription mentioned above is generally used for aircraft tickets et cetera, but sometimes (like in US visas) simple vowels are used (MULLER, GOSSMANN).

In addition, capital letters are used: at the beginning of sentences (may be used after a colon, when the part of a sentence after the colon can be treated as a sentence); in the formal pronoun Sie 'you' and the determiner Ihr 'your' (optionally in other second-person pronouns in letters); in adjectives at the beginning of proper names (e.g. der Stille Ozean 'the Pacific Ocean'); in adjectives with the suffix '-er' from geographical names (e.g. Berliner); in adjectives with the suffix '-sch' from proper names if written with the apostrophe before the suffix (e.g. Ohm'sches Gesetz 'Ohm's law', also written ohmsches Gesetz).

Compounds involving letters, abbreviations, or numbers (written in figures, even with added suffixes) are hyphenated: A-Dur 'A major', US-Botschaft 'US embassy', 10-prozentig 'with 10 percent', 10er-Gruppe 'group of ten'.

Optionally the hyphen can be used to emphasize individual components, to clarify the meaning of complicated compounds, to avoid misunderstandings or when three identical letters occur together (in practice, in this case it is mostly used when writing nouns with triple vowels, e.g. See-Elefant 'elephant seal').

Except for the common sequences sch (/ʃ/), ch ([x] or [ç]) and ck (/k/), the letter ⟨c⟩ appears only in loanwords or in proper nouns.

The letter ⟨q⟩ in German appears only in the sequence ⟨qu⟩ (/kv/) except for loanwords such as Coq au vin or Qigong (the latter is also written Chigong).

It is used either as an alternative letter for ⟨i⟩, for instance in Mayer / Meyer (a common family name that occurs also in the spellings Maier / Meier), or especially in the Southwest, as a representation of [iː] that goes back to an old IJ (digraph), for instance in Schwyz or Schnyder (an Alemannic variant of the name Schneider).

Thus, German typewriters and computer keyboards offer two dead keys: one for the acute and grave accents and one for circumflex.

In one curious instance, the word Ski ('ski') is pronounced as if it were *Schi all over the German-speaking areas (reflecting its pronunciation in its source language Norwegian), but only written that way in Austria.

Most one-syllable words that end in a single consonant are pronounced with long vowels, but there are some exceptions such as an, das, es, in, mit, and von.

Tunnel, Mörtel 'mortar') and -em ([əm~m̩] in the dative case of adjectives, e.g. kleinem from klein 'small') is pronounced as a schwa (after which consonant letters are usually not doubled) or is mute altogether.

They are used for direct speech, quotes, names of books, periodicals, films, etc., and for words in unusual meaning.

In these texts, ⟨z⟩ along with combinations such as ⟨tz, cz, zz, sz, zs⟩ was chosen to transcribe the sounds /ts/ and /s(ː)/, which is ultimately the origin of the modern German letters ⟨z, tz⟩ and ⟨ß⟩ (an old ⟨sz⟩ ligature).

Significant production of German texts only resumed during the reign of the Hohenstaufen dynasty (in the High Middle Ages).

By the 16th century, a new interregional standard developed on the basis of the East Central German and Austro-Bavarian varieties.

This was influenced by several factors: Mid-16th century Counter-Reformation reintroduced Catholicism to Austria and Bavaria, prompting a rejection of the Lutheran language.

In the early 18th century, the Lutheran standard was also introduced in the southern states and countries, Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland, due to the influence of northern German writers, grammarians such as Johann Christoph Gottsched or language cultivation societies such as the Fruitbearing Society.

Only with the introduction of compulsory education in late 18th and early 19th century was the spelling further standardized, though at first independently in each state because of the political fragmentation of Germany.

In 1876, the Prussian government instituted the First Orthographic Conference [de] to achieve a standardization for the entire German Empire.

[citation needed] Since Prussia was, by far, the largest state in the German Empire, its regulations also influenced spelling elsewhere, for instance, in 1894, when Switzerland recognized the Duden.

In 1944, the Nazi German government planned a reform of the orthography, but because of World War II, it was never implemented.

In response, the Ministers of Culture of the federal states in West Germany officially declared the Duden spellings to be binding as of November 1955.

The Duden editors used their power cautiously because they considered their primary task to be the documentation of usage, not the creation of rules.