umlaute

See also: Umlaute

English

Etymology

From German Umlaute, from um (“around”) + Laute (“sounds”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʊm.laʊt.ə/

Noun

umlaute

1. (rare, Germanism) plural of umlaut
   • 1874, English Dialect Society; Publications; № 4, 48, or 60; page 13:

     It is clear that in all these umlaute the new vowel is exactly intermediate between the original vowel of the root and the modifying one of the termination : if the new vowel became identical with its modifier, the result would be not an umlaut but a complete assimilation.

   • 1900, Albert S. Gatschet, “Grammatic Sketch of the Catawba Language”, in American Anthropologist, New Series, v 2, n 3, p 528 ^〃 (self-published by the American Anthropological Association):

     The umlaute, or sounds of periphasis (ä, ö, ü), exist in the Catawba alphabet, e. g., in ómä, himself; túhö, small; dürûbi, iron; but they are not in frequent use.

   • 1945, United States Government Printing Office, Style manual: Issued by the public printer under authority of section 51 of an act of Congress approved January 12, 1895, page 306 (revised edition; self-published)

     Other than those of umlaute […]

   • 1985, Darío Lucarella (editor), Proceedings of the First European Conference on T_EX for Scientific Documentation, 16–17 May 1985, Como, Italy, pages 61^{1}, 62^{2}, 64^{{3} & {4}}, &c. (Addison–Wesley Pub. Co.; →ISBN, 9780201133998):

     ^{1} When processing German text with T_EX one is faced with the following problem: Many German words contain “umlaute” (ä, ö, ü, Ä, Ö, Ü) and/or the sharp S (ß). These letters are normally produced by control sequences (\"a ... \"U or \ss).

     ^{2} A reasonable place for the German umlaute might be the positions ’32 ... ’37 in the Computer Modern text fonts where normally the Scandinavian ligatures are placed.

     ^{3} The creation of the umlaute as described above is just a few lines of code.

     ^{4} It should be noticed that the procedure for handling umlaute as described above keeps T_EX source files portable to other installations.

     Many computer users are tempted to use built-in umlaut features that come with Microsoft softwares.^[sic] However, there are still people who do not use Microsoft compatible computers (like Apple2) and who are not planning to buy a new computer just to be able to read umlaute. My suggestion is that umlaute be written as "a or ae, "o or oe, "u or ue.