å and ä and ö

[Kay Engman]

What name do Swedes use for the phonetic marks å, ä, ö ?  I mean for instance, if you are speaking on the phone and someone asks you to spell the name of your village which is Färgaryd, what do you say to describe the second letter?  Do you call it an umlaut as the Germans do?  Do you say, F - umlaut a - r - g, etc. ?  I don't think it's the same as an umlaut, right?

[Bibi Gustafson]

Å, ä and ö are proper letters in the Swedish alphabet. They are listed last after x, y and z. Å is pronounced similar to a long o, ä like ai in hair and ö like ea in heard. When spelling something on the phone for instance names are often used to clarify the letter pronounced. Färgaryd would be: F as in Fredrik, ä as in Ägir (or ärlig), r as in Roger, g as in Gustav, a as in Adam, r as in roger, y as in Yngve and d as in David.
 
Best regards, Bibi

[Sam Blixt]

Hi Kay,
 
We also use to say an a with two dots for ä and
an o with two dots for ö
like an a with a ring for å
 
Regards/Sam

[Mikael Wikman]

Ä an ö are umlauts of a and o, but yet, as Bibi Gustafsson says, proper letters (which they are not in German). The Swedish term for the phenomenon that a changes to ä and o to ö in some declensions is »regressivt i-omljud» (regressive i-umlaut). I am sure there are correct English linguistic terms for these letters. Otherwise you can always describe them like Sam Blixt does above.

[Carl Szabad]

Kay: The letters are pronounced this way: long å like a in tall, short å like o in Bob, ä like ai in air, dark ö like i in bird, light ö does not exist in english, but is in french the same sound as eux in yeux (eyes, if you know french).

[Kay Engman]

Thanks so much for everyones help!  I used to say a with a circle, but now I will say a with a ring and am glad to know that I am not commiting a faux pas when I say o with two dots !
 
 
Kay

[Nina Olds]

In American pronunciation, the Swedish letter å if it is a long vowel is pronounced more like more and if it is a short vowel a bit like the first o in mosquito.

[Thomas Westman]

Hej Kay, equivalent to A = ALFA, B = BRAVO, C = CHARLIE we use Å = ÅKE, Ä = ÄRLIG, Ö = ÖSTEN. I believe Swedes will understand what you mean although the pronunciation of these names may not be fully correct. Thomas

[Thomas Westman]

Hej again Kay, when browsing through a homepage about radio amateurs I found the following information about how they internationally describes the letters å, ä and ö: Å = Alfa Alfa,  
Ä = Alfa Echo, Ö = Oscar Echo. Thomas

[Vera Rendohl]

Hi,
 
I'm from Brazil and looking for relatives in Sweden.
 
My husband's great grandfather, Holger Rendahl, emmigrated to Brazil to work and teach glass or crystal techniques at a glass company in São Paulo, before 1906 (his oldest son was born in Brazil on October 10, 1906). He met his wife at the ship on his travel to Brazil.
 
He had a sister Elsa Johansson (same mother different father) that wrote a letter to Brazil on March 21, 1968 her address was PI 592 Kosta Sweden, maybe a retirement house.
 
I have few material, but one of them is a little embroidery, sent by Elsa, with the letters N P the name REND_HL and the date 1878. The letter represented by the _ looks like an e plus an u, maybe an a. Is it an ancient swedish letter?
 
In Brazil we have different spellings for the family name: Rendohl, Rendahl and Rendolh.
 
I have a scanned picture of the embroidery and I can e-mail to anyone who can help me.
 
Any information on Elsa or Holger will help a lot. We believe Elsa was born in 1889. On the letter she told that Holger was born in Sweden, 1878 and died in Brazil, 1921. The old ones from our family think there is some connection to Göteborgs or some place with a name like this.
 
I would appreciate any help. Thank you.

[Sam Blixt]

Hi Vera,
 
There is an Elsa Johansson who was born 1889, Aug. 28 in Ekeberga, Kronobergs län.
 
She die in KOSTA 1985, Jan 27. She lived at Rydvägen 1, KOSTA when she died.
 
Regards
 
Sam Blixt/Oskarshamn/Sweden

[Carl Szabad]

Vera: Rendahl is a typical, but not too ordinary, swedish family name. Göteborg is the second biggest city in sweden.
 
Holger is not listed in the emigration records under that name, he might have taken his family name afterwards or left illegally.
 
But you put this question under the wrong headline.

[Anders Åberg]

Vera,
There is one large family named Rendahl that comes from the parish Ölmstad in Jönköpings län, Småland. The ancestors of the family have been parish clerks ang organists for several generations from 1750 to around 1900. The name comes from another parish i Östergötland called Rinna an the name was originally spellt Rindahl, but was changed to Rendal around 1760. I have seen a long list of decendants to Gustav Pehrsson Rendahl (1732-1768) but unfortunately I can´t find Holger Rendahl amongst them. If the list i complete or not I can´t tell, but perhaps there is some more information about Holger that you have like for instance a second name??.
Best regards!
Anders Åberg

[Olle Elm]

Vera Rendohl,
I have checked on a genealogical database called DISBYT. There I find members of the Rindahl/Rendahl family from Rinna and Ölmstad of which I have known a few members living in the town Gränna, in Småland. This is the family Anders Åberg refers to above. I have however also found a Karl Johan Rendahl in Växjö Domkyrkoförsamling,  Kronobergs län, born 1871. From the facts mensioned above he would be interesting; Perhaps a relative. Maybe he is to be found in the KGF-database if you ask below on Småland, Växjö.

[Conny Gustavsson]

To Vera.
Found in the KGF database.
Holger was born in Ekeberga parish 5 september 1878 as a illegitimate child of Sara Vilhelmina Sandin 17 years of age. Fathers name is not mentioned in the bearth record. It can be most troublesome to find out who the father is. The best tip is probably to advertise in Genealogic forums. For example Kronobergs Genealogiska Förening (You can contact through me).
The same Sara Vilhelmina is mother to Elsa mentioned by Sam Blixt above. Father to Elsa is the tailor Georg Alfred Viderström. They then lived at the Ekeberga stom (=farm belonging to the church). Seems like there was tailors in the Sandin family as well.
Best regards  
Conny

[Jan Söderström]

Back to Å, Ä and Ö.
I just want to add some information I found somewhere on the Anbytarforum site (maybe under other topics) written by a linguistic expert: Two dots on top of a letter is a symbol for an excluded e after the letter and a ring symbolizes an exluded a. So, an å was originally aa, an ä was an ae and the ö was oe and this is exatly how they are written today when you don't have a keyboard with these letter. What confuses me is that people with the name (male) Clas or Claes sometimes spell it Claës, which looks stupid as the longer spelling would be Claees! But maybe that's another story!
My surname Söderström should be written Soederstroem the long way, but people sometimes get confused, so I simply drop the dots most times when I'm writing to people that don't understand Swedish.

[Anders Pemer]

Hei!
 
Er denne Carl Johan Sjöblom en reell person, som for eksempel kan gjenfinnes i den svenske telefonkatalogen eller på andre måter?
 
Den påstående og pågående stilen minner svært mye en situasjon vi hadde tidligere i en annen diskusjon om svensk middelalder (Bjørn Skeppare?), hvor vedkommende rabulist benyttet et navn som begynte på Alexander etter det jeg husker i farten.
 
Før man mener for mye om en bestemt slekt, er det vel et minimum at selve probanden er en virkelig person.
 
mvh Are

[Peter Karlsson (Peterk)]

Maybe it is mentioned before, but this information of how to write these caracters on an english keybord, could fit in under this header..
 
The three extra letters in the Swedish alphabet
 
You want to write them on your PC but don't know how? This is how:
 
å, Å : ALT + 0229, ALT + 0197  
ä, Ä : ALT + 0228, ALT + 0196  
ö, Ö : ALT + 0246, ALT + 0214
 
And two extra Scandinavian letters (used in Denmark and Norway):
 
? = ALT + 0230, ? = ALT + 0198  
? = ALT + 0248, ? = ALT + 0216  
 
This information is directly taken from :
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/7095/swede.html

[Anders Andersson]

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.

[Mats Högberg]

Also in Spanish you use an umlaut when the letter u should be pronounced before an e, as in Arg?elles.
 
Other words with the letter combination ue and without the umlaut should sound as e only, as in guerra and Guernica.
 
Un saludo - Mats Högberg

[Mikael Persson]

I'd also like to mention, that Svenska Språknämnden (in charge of deciding how to spell the Swedish language) recommends to simply write an 'a' instead of 'å' and 'ä', and an 'o' instead of 'ö' if your keyboard can't produce them easily and you don't feel like using the proper way that Peter Karlsson indicated above.
 
Regards,
Mikael

[mikael]

The 'umlaut' is originally an e, but the ring above å is a small o, to show that the a is to be pronounced like an old Swedish o (which is the same as in German).

[Ulla Ringborg Iavello]

Hej!
 
Carl Szabad för att Du visade mig hur man gör med svenska bokstäver. Är ju lite besvärligt, men bättre än a,a,o. Jag hade Universal Translator tills jag köpte en ny dator och fick Windows XP. UT går inte att använda. Finns inte längre att köpa.
 
Någon här sade att man kunde använda a och o, men det går inte när man ska sätta in en ny socken t.ex.,för jag har försökt!
 
Mvh, Ulla i Calif.

[Leif Samuelsson]

Hej Ulla!
 
Jag tycker det enklaste sättet på Windows är att låtsas att jag har ett svenskt tangentbord. Gå till Control Panel och öppna inställningarna för Regional and Language Options och klicka sedan på fliken Languages och knappen Details. Lägg till ett tangentbord med Swedish/Swedish. Sedan kan du enkelt växla fram och tillbaks med Alt+Shift. Detta förutsätter nog att du kan skriva i blindo (som jag gör nu) men man ju också rita dit bokstäverna på knapparna.
 
In English: You can add a virtual Swedish keyboard on Windows using the Control Panel. In XP it's under Regional and Language Options and in previous versions it's under Keyboard.
 
Mvh, Leif i Calif.

[Tomas Andersson]

Mikael,  
 
Just a small correction. The ring over the A in Å is not a small o. Originally, it was a small a but for more easy writing, it's been changed to a ring. The letter Å was a double A, which is why you find in Norwegian that they still write it that way. The name Håkan in Sweden is Haakon i Norwegian.

[Peter Karlsson / anbytarvärd (Peter)]

See also: Swedish extra vowels - how to create them!