Titel: å and ä and ö
Skrivet av: Anders Andersson skrivet 2001-09-09, 22:36
The two dots above one of the vowels in a pair (as in Citro?n) is known as a trema if its purpose is that the vowel is to be pronounced by itself. The German term umlaut pertains to the aforementioned vowel shift phenomenon (a->ä, o->ö, u->?) only. There is no such thing as an e with umlaut, but any vowel can be marked with a trema if necessary.
In Swedish handwriting, the diacritics in ä and ö are sometimes written as squiggles (~), similar to ? and ?. It's just another development of the original e diacritic. However, the squiggle should not be used in printed or typewritten Swedish text, as it could be interpreted as nasalization of the vowel (see Portuguese) instead.