English-language articles sometimes need to use foreign words. Most languages require more characters than the 26 letters of the English-language alphabet that ASCII supports. This shouldn’t be hard, since Unicode provides characters for almost every important language in the world. When you sit down to enter foreign words at your computer, though, you run into issues.
I’ll talk here about German text, since it’s the language I know best next to English.
When you need German words
You might need to enter German when giving a quotation, when using German words for precision or flavor, or when using the names and titles of people, places, and organizations. With names, you can sometimes use anglicized versions. It’s common to turn place and organization names into their English equivalents. Bayern becomes Bavaria. Köln becomes Cologne. “Christlich Demokratische Union” becomes “Christian Democratic Union.” It’s best to follow the usual practice for any given name, but you can use German as long as your audience understands it. “Cologne” just sounds wrong for a German city, so I use “Köln” whenever I can get away with it.
Summit of the Brocken, Germany. Photo by Gary McGath.
Older historical names often get anglicized. Friedrich III, Elector of Saxony in the 16th century, usually becomes Frederick III. This may be because historians used to be more inclined to anglicize foreign names, and we’ve become used to their versions. However, Kaiser Wilhelm is never William. Names from the nineteenth century onward generally keep their original spelling in English.
In “Snares of Satan,” I use “Friedrich” because I like authenticity. It’s always a legitimate option, though some audiences could find it confusing.
Nouns are always capitalized. They should stay this way when used in an English-language piece.
Umlauts and Eszett
In addition to the 26 letters of the alphabet, German uses umlauts and an odd-looking character called Eszett (ß). You can write German without using them, but you can’t ignore them. An umlaut isn’t a decoration; it changes the pronunciation of the letter and the meaning of the word. “Schon” means “already,” but “schön” means “beautiful.” If you leave out umlauts, you commit spelling errors.
There’s an alternative if using umlauts is too difficult. You can add the letter “e” after the modified letter. For example, “schön” can be “schoen.” It means the same thing, and Germans will understand it, though it’s less common. Swiss German uses this technique more than High German. At one time, scribes wrote an “e” over the modified letter, but it got reduced to two dots over the years.
Don’t confuse the umlaut with the diaeresis, even though they look the same in most fonts. The diaeresis indicates that a letter is pronounced separately. It’s rare in English today, but you may occasionally see spellings like “naïve.” German doesn’t use the diaeresis.
The umlauts, or whatever they are, in band names like Mötley Crüe are their own thing. They aren’t German, so I’ve got no advice to offer.
The Eszett originally replaced the letters “sz,” but that somehow got turned into “ss.” Some words use “ss” and some use “ß,” and the rules changed in the last big spelling reform. Many Germans always use “ss,” and no one will complain if you do that in an English-language document. Don’t gratuitously turn “ss” into “ß” to look cool, though. You’re apt to make spelling mistakes that way.
Typing German characters
You can type German characters in most operating systems without memorizing their Unicode code points. Here are some pages that may help: