Talk:Heavy metal umlaut

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Heavy metal umlaut is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article Milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 26, 2004.

Article Milestones
Date	Process	Result
May 14, 2004	Featured article candidate	Promoted
September 25, 2006	Featured article review	Demoted
Current Status: Former featured article

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This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2006 press source article for details.

The citation is in: Tim de Lisle. "Why Moben wanted to be Möben", The Guardian, April 20, 2006.

The spoken word version of this article is part of WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, an attempt to produce recordings of Wikipedia articles. To participate, visit the project page.

[edit] ÿ

>Queensrÿche went further by putting the umlaut over the 'y' in their name.
>From a linguistic viewpoint, this might be regarded as a diaresis, rather than as an umlaut.

This is wrong, the diacritic mark does not produce a diaresis here, as there are no vowels to be pronounced distinctly, like in the Spanish word lingüista (linguist, linguistic).

Motörhead & Co. do also only use the umlaut letters, but you cannot really regard the use of the letters as umlauts (in the phonological/phonetic sense), because "Motörhead" is still pronounced "Motorhead".

--zeno 19:16 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

On the contrary, I always go out of my way to pronounce it "Motuerhead", just to emphasise the silliness of it, likewise Blue Oueyster Cult and Murtley Crueue... ;-) GRAHAMUK 11:10, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The way Lemmy pronounces it is not standard RP English to say the least. Roughly: Mo'er'ead. On the other hand, I generally sound a bit like Frasier Crane, but I still like saying Mo'er'ead -- awright? -- The Anome 22:14, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] n-umlaut

I agree completely with zeno's comments above. None of the examples are using the "two dots" for the function of diaeresis or umlaut though I'm happy for the dots to be referred to by either name, muddling in the other senses of these words is just wrong.

And to test your browser, here is "Spin̈al Tap" rendered using a Unicode combining diaeresis - it doesn't display correctly on my machine though ):

--hippietrail

Technically, one could "pronounce" n-umlaut, as the umlaut signifies with German vowels (front-rounding). Does any language actually have a front-rounded /n/, though? The most absurd umlauting would be "w-umlaut", since the sound that "w" stands for in English is already about as front-rounded as can be.

No, wait, in German it's not front-rounding, it's just fronting. For example, ä is not rounded, but is fronted. So, following this reasoning, n̈ should be pronounced as a fronted n... is it possible? Isn't n already dental? How can you "front it more"?

--Fibonacci 14:50, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

/n/ is a nasal sound, produced by redirecing the airstream so it comes out the NOSE; air also goes into the mouth cavity from the lungs, but does not come out the mouth. Furthermore, this oral side-cavity is closed off in the front by the tip of the tongue, i.e. BEHIND the lips. Therefore, the air never reaches the lips, so rounding them has basically no effect on the sound (try it!). [There may be a very very slight change, because rounding the lips also moves cheek muscles, thus slightly chainging the shape of the mouth cavity, but the difference is basically not audible.] As to /w/, it's rounded, but NOT front; it's basically the semi-vowel version of the BACK rounded vowel [u]. A front rounded glide is possible; it's found at the beginning of the French words huit, huile, etc. It is just the semi-vowel version of [ü]. NathanV 10:31, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the umlautted vowels in German are just like their un-umauted forms except for being fronted. ü and ö are thus front-rounded, since u and o are rounded to begin with. You can't really "front" an /n/ in any sense, unless you just replace it with another nasal sound like /m/ whose closure is further towards the front of the mouth (at the lips in the case of [m]). So I guess we should say Spimal Tap. (Actually, the Standard English /n/ is not quite dental, its actually articulated on the alveolar ridge, so you could front it a little be pronouning it with e.g. a French accent. But the difference is very hard to hear.) NathanV 10:31, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I pronounce n̈ as if it is ñ, thus giving "spignal tap". From a linguistics fan POV this use of diaeresis is really bad. Rather than make them look çöøł I feel it makes them look şåð as ĥęłλ. It's just another kind of Leetspeak…

As for w: ẅ :p — Jor (Darkelf) 23:39, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] The Dutch "ij".

Dear DarkElf, I might know nothing about Heavy Metal but I'm Dutch myself - and every schoolchild learns to write the ÿ at 6 years old. It's just that many people seperate it into I and J, the same way that in earlier times the A and E were conjoined (Æ) in many words originating from Latin. I've personally never seen an ÿ in French. Indeed, the Dutch refer to the "y" (without dots) as the I-grec or French Y to distinguish it from the "ÿ". Zullen we deze discussie in het Nederlands voortzetten om het de buitenstaanders moeilijk te maken? Jfdwolff 20:45, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

De IJ is niet hetzelfde als de Y-grèc. Er bestaat een aparte Ĳ/ĳ (U+0132 en U+0133), en Ÿ/ÿ wordt specifiek genoemd in de Unicode beschrijving als niet acceptabel voor de IJ. Voor zover ik weet wordt de Ÿ/ÿ alleen in Frans, Welsh, en Turks (niet zeker van de laatste) gebruikt, en in enkele romanisaties (Chinees bijv.). Zie ook Dutch Y, diaeresis. Onder diaeresis heb ik een paar voorbeelden voor het gebruik van ÿ gegeven. Als je echt heb geleerd de IJ als een Y-grèc met trema of umlaut te schrijven, vind ik dat een zeer rare zaak. Ÿ/ÿ voor Ĳ/ĳ is gewoon onjuist: de enige acceptable transcriptie als de echte IJ-ligatuur (eerder gegeven) niet beschikbaar is is IJ/ij. De IJ wordt niet voor niets tegenwoordig onder de I gecollateerd in woordenboeken! (Alhoewel ik persoonlijk er meer voor voel de letter als een 26e letter in het alfabet ná de Y te zetten.) Jor 21:44, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What's an example of ÿ in Welsh? NathanV 12:14, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ik blijf mijn twijfels houden, maar ik ben arts en geen Neerlandicus :-) Jfdwolff 10:56, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Maybe some mention has to be made of the French electronic group Rinôçérôse; although it is neither heavy metal nor umlaut, something about the name belongs in the same general category. I am too lazy to find the right entry to put it in though... Speaking of such language play, I am also thinking of the recent Korean phenomenon called oegye-eo (alien language) that uses deliberate use of special characters (everything from Japanese Hiragana to Cyrillic to graphic-shape letters provided by Korean language sets) to write Korean on the web, approximating the shape of Korean (in addition to other tricks), as a type of secret language. This is mainly done by young people. Maybe I'll write it up one day.. Iceager 06:43, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Shall we add in a subsection titled something like "Other gratuitous diacritics" --Christophernicus 08:29, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've removed : (The "ÿ" is otherwise only used in old French and in some French proper nouns Never seen any case ! Can someone give a sample ? Ericd 17:36, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

The ducs de Croÿ... Nunh-huh 08:38, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

--- This article definitely needs some phonetics, but I'm not qualified. Ericd 20:03, 16 May 2004 (UTC)

Is used in French proper names, some place names called L'Haÿ-de-blablabla, and, AFAIK, a champagne called aÿ. (Please don't ask.) In Dutch, the ij/ÿ thing is that the two look alike in handwriting, hence handwritten ij -> ÿ. (My system's Garamond font is similar in this regard, the italics ij ligature looking somewhat between non-ligature ij and ÿ.) I have changed the article. -- de:Benutzer:Ein_anderer_Name

[edit] Much more stupid than the air guitar!

Just as I was thinking that air guitar was the the silliest thing a loser could invent, here comes "heavy metal umlaut." God, this Book of the Brain-Dead is beyond my wildest imagination.

I thought the silliest thing a loser could invent was the wiki....

Nay! The silliest thing a loser could invent is the heavy metal umlaut article design shirt on CafePress! Cernen

[edit] Spinal Tap

Spoof band Spinal Tap parodied the idea still further in 1982 by putting the umlaut over the letter "n". The n-umlaut/n-diaeresis character does not occur in any known language or belong to any standard character set, and this does not represent any conventional correspondence between spelling and pronunciation.

It does occur in a small Central American Amerindian language, Jacaltec. "The following character appears here written in ASR system: n¨ (n + diaeresis)" [1]

Added. Wikipedia, where no detail is too obscure! :-D - David Gerard 12:34, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

n-umlaut was also used by French Jesuit missionaries in the late 17th century in writing the Native American language Abenaki. In that language, it's used to mark nasalization on preceding vowels. It's a big pain in the neck to reproduce in Word.--anonymous, April 2, 2006

I condensed the text of the Spinal Tap story a little (removing only the bit about Guatemala) and moved it to the caption. It has since been moved back. My thinking is this: A caption should tell something about the picture and tie the picture to the article. The tidbit about the obscure n¨ adds something that the reader won't get from looking at the picture. It makes for a perfect caption. It also makes people more likely to read that particular bit of text (as a caption) and draws the reader into the surrounding text. -- ke4roh 21:16, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've left it out but readded Guatemala, so people will have some idea where the heck Jacaltec is from - David Gerard 21:49, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I took out "a consonant" from the text because it also appears in the latest caption. I didn't figure everything had to be in both places. In particular, I think it's a characteristic of good captions to bring out some tidbit of information not mentioned in the article. There are two other changes I would make and my reasoning:

I would move the picture back to the left to provide visual balance (being sure to leave a blank line after the image code to avoid an ugly indentation in IE)
I would remove "Guatemala" because people can click the link to find out that 40,000 Mayan Indians speak Jacaltec in Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico.

-- ke4roh 03:43, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

While the caption may include information not found in the article (as per that link), it strikes me as a bad idea to deliberately remove material from the text to the caption. e.g. remember that, owing to the variable copyright status of Wikipedia images, most of our mirror sites don't actually pull the images or captions - so the mirrored version won't have them. The text should be complete; the captions should be strictly optional extras.

The Guatemalan thing - again, there's no reason to cut the information and deliberately send someone off to another article when it's a single word.

The layout looked too odd to me with the Spinal Tap logo to the left, so I put it back to the right. The break also fouls up the framing of the image box in Firefox (cuts off the bottom border) - David Gerard 09:53, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

At what point in the movie is the quote "It's like a pair of eyes. You're looking at the umlaut, and it's looking at you."? My girlfriend is a rabid fan of the movie (she was ecstatic to learn I named my 1100MHz Duron pc OURSGOTO11) and can't remember that quote being in it, and a google search "looking at the umlaut" "looking at you" "spinal tap" -spin -wiki brings back only 7 unique results, one of which is someone else who can't seem to remember hearing it in the movie. Sooo.. can I get a timestamp on where this quote can be found in the movie? Most other references on the web, as is all too common these days, seem to be from Wiki. Zaphraud 08:40, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Häagen-Dazs

Is there any place in this article for the Häagen-Dazs umlaut? RickK 21:56, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)

Surely that's a genuine diaeresis? This is much more about bogosity in the two dots - David Gerard 22:06, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It's unlikely, since "Häagen-Dazs" is a made up word with no meaning. RickK 04:12, Jun 27, 2004 (UTC)

That's interesting. How's it canonically pronounced? - David Gerard 09:38, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Both "a"s have the same pronunciation -- as in "father". RickK 20:21, Jun 27, 2004 (UTC)

Mentioned in latest version. - David Gerard 21:42, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, this has no place in an article about heavy metal umlauts. Should be removed. Everyking 00:30, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. It's fine on the talk page, but a section saying the commercial use is unrelated to the heavy metal umlaut opens the door to saying all kinds of things are unrelated. HMÜ is unrelated to the importation of 700 German rocket scientists in Operation Paperclip after World War II, for eample, even though they brought more umlauts to the United States in their names. -- ke4roh 00:44, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)

If someone can write the article on the subject, it'd belong in "See also" - a good reference PDF is linked below - David Gerard 00:53, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I would have thought that while there are few enough examples of gratuitous umlauts known outside of heavy metal, a brief mention of them here would be appropriate until there's enough material to make an article of their own. &emdash;ciphergoth 13:14, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)

The Foreign branding article already discusses the use of faux umlauts in non-musical trademarks and slogans. "Häagen-Dazs" is THE prototypical example of foreign branding, in my opinion: a name invented to look and sound foreign, with no meaning unrelated to the product. (Unfortunately, the ones who coined it did an extremely poor job of looking or sounding Scandinavian, as they originally intended.) --ISNorden 19:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amon Düül

The band Amon Düül not only predates Blue Oyster Cult, but they feature two consecutive umlauts in their name. I'm not sure if they count as heavy metal, but Chuck Eddy does include one of their albums (plus two by Amon Düül II) in his Stairway to Hell ranking of metal albums. Mark Desrosiers

Well there you go. Here [2] is Amon Düül's 1969 debut album, with the double-umlauts clearly visible on the sleeve. —Stormie 05:28, Jun 27, 2004 (UTC)

Aha, but wait a minute! The AMG says ([3]) that the name comes from "Amon being an Egyptian sun god, Düül a character from Turkish fiction." So, if the umlauts are legitimate, rather than gratuitous, it's not really a heavy metal umlaut! —Stormie 05:35, Jun 27, 2004 (UTC)

I certainly hope we're not going to try to list every band with an umlaut in their name ... so how metal are they? Being earlier than BOC, they may rate a mention in the history. Does anyone know where BOC got the umlaut from? - David Gerard 09:38, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Just added them to history. Were there any prominent umlauts/diaereses before this? - David Gerard 09:58, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

According to this site [4], Allan Lanier added the umlaut. I haven't found anything else about his rationale or inspiration. This article [5] is also worth fact-checking for additional info. Targetpuller

Just added Allen Lanier. I did find that PDF - it would be useful for an article on commercial diacritic abuse. If there's a commonly-used phrase for the phenomenon - David Gerard 21:47, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] should this page exist?

It's disgusting to me that this article was featured. But maybe all wikis are doomed to become masturbatory rather than useful for learning new things: see the Portland Pattern Repository.

Personally, I think this is fantastic. It may not be high culture, but it's an excellent example of a real-world phenomenon that many people are curious about. It's now one of the examples I use when explaining Wikipedia, and it catches the imagination. It would be bad if all entries were this trivial, but a few do no harm. William Pietri 18:34 06 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I agree fully---except with the implication that this issue is trivial. It is an interesting example of superficial borrowing in a language contact situation. More importantly, it illustrates the socially-embematic nature of orthography (cf. the ideologically-laden issue of the adoption or abandonment of Arabic script for languages like Turkish, Swahili, or Hausa). Umlauts are associated with languages that are associated in some people's minds with things like Wagner, Vikings, and Valhalla; these people seem to choose to use umlauts for the same kinds of reasons that a Hausa poet might choose to use the Arabic rather than the Roman alphabet. Although admittedly not much is at stake in the choice of a band name, the issue illustrated is clearly not trivial. This article is a good starting place for info about this. --Nathan 25 Nov 2004

I think this is classic Wikipedia: the reader comes in looking for heavy metal info, finds it, and exits having (as a bonus!) learned about character sets and orthography. -- Karada 18:57, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And articulatory phonetics, as of 25 Nov 2004

I totally agree. If WP stuck to so-called "worthy" subjects it would not only be dull, it would probably be quite a small and infrequently visited place. I think it's great that the whole gamut of human culture can be covered here - after all, no-one is forcing anyone to read anything. There are many pages I think are useless, but somebody thought they were worthwhile, and I can ignore what I'm not interested in. Graham 23:46, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I absolutely love the fact this article exists. It is a testament to why Wikipedia is great. Where else could you find a serious article about such a minor cultural artifact? Tempshill 17:27, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If an article like this helps a linguist do serious research about his country's attitudes towards language and spelling, it has served a productive purpose--the polar opposite of being "masturbatory". Not every article in a paper encyclopedia is about timeless artworks, world-shaking events, or scientific discoveries intended to save the human race; why should online encyclopedias be restricted to covering that kind of topic? --ISNorden 20:11, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Underground Zerø?

I suspect that the ø in Underground Zerø is meant to look like an actual zero (0) character as a lot of character sets differentiate a zero from an o by placing a slash across the character or by placing a dot in the center for a zero.

If this is the case, it should probably be removed from the Heavy Metal Umlaut section. - User:Suppafly

I'd probably want to leave them there unless and until we know for sure - David Gerard 00:16, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think this might actually be the case, as evidenced by the kidneythieves album "Zerøspace" and the Brazilian band Zerø. Incidentally, I know the drummer of Zerø and could ask him about the spelling if there is a demand. - Christophernicus 08:38, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Flash-based commentary

Someone tried to add this link to the article, but since it didn't directly pertain to the subject it got removed, but I liked it, so I'll leave the link here. Everyking 12:18, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I also moved it over to Wikipedia:Wikipedia in blogs. Bryan 17:40, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I removed the link again. The link is self-reference, as an article should talk about its subject, not about the article itself. However the link would be a good external link for the Wikipedia article. Removed text is reproduced below. --L33tminion | (talk) 23:31, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Heavy Metal Umlaut: The Movie Movie by Jon Udell

The link should stay as it is now part of the lore of this topic. It isn't discoverable on this discussion page, yet it should be.

[edit] Interröbang Cartel

The Interrobang Cartel are currently listed under the section for gratuitous umlauts and the section for non-gratuitous umlauts. Surely it's one or the other. LizardWizard 04:43, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My Life in Heavy Metal link

The "My Life in Heavy Metal by Steve Almond" link has been removed from the parent site. Can anyone find a good link to replace the original? - Christophernicus 08:42, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I added the cached version at the Web Archive. --Christophernicus 06:03, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistency with other Articles?

On the Umlaut page for Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish:

As it is not a case of marking grammatical variation, i.e., of tempus or modus, nor of syllable modification, it is neither a case of umlaut nor of diacritical marking. Hence it ought to be improper to call these characters umlauts; however, there is no more precise descriptor in English.

However, in this article:

Umlauts are used in several languages, such as Icelandic, German, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, French and Portuguese...

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that umlauts/diaeresis appear in such languages, or appear in the letters of such languages, rather than say that they are "used"? That is to say, when one uses a Swedish "ä", they are not modifying an existing "a" sound, but utilizing a separate letter in its own right. Therefor the umlaut is not used, in the same way a tilde over an n, a part of the letter, is not used in Spanish (whereas other accent marks are, stress syllables for example). NOTE: I am not saying that umlauts are not "used" in German, as they are. I am also not saying that the word umlaut should be avoided when referring to Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. Just saying the phrasing makes this article somewhat inconsistant with others. 64.162.10.162 05:50, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How about "Umlauts, or umlaut-like characters, are used..."?

The problem here is that English doesn't seem to have a name for the diacritic itself, only for the various phenomena it represents in context. "Umlaut" (or Umlautung) is primarily the name not of the ¨ diacritic, but of a historical development in vowels. The English word is "i-mutation" as far as I'm aware. The German vowels ä, ö, ü are results of this sort of development, and English calls their dots umlauts. Similarly, "diaeresis" first of all means that two contiguous vowels are pronounced separately, particularly in contexts where they might be expected to form a diphthong. "Hiatus" is another word for this. This is what the ¨ indicates e.g. in French ("Noël" etc.) There are other uses, like the Dutch ÿ (ij-ligature) or the Spanish ü in sequences like "-güe-", where the ¨ indicates that the u is not silent (note that the sign is commonly called "diéresis" anyway).

[edit] Tréma in French

The statement "Umlauts are used in several languages, such as Icelandic, German, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, French and Portuguese" seems to me to falsely imply that umlauts are a regular feature of French. With the exception of the rare examples of ÿ (which as a native French speaker I have to admit I'd never encountered,) most instances of the ¨ in French represent a tréma (or diaeresis) and marks a separation of vowels, not a modification of the vowel sound. Adjusting 08:24, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)

[edit] Webcast about the evolution of this article: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html

On this blog I noticed a link to a Webcast about the evolution of this article. It is about 8 minutes long and can be found at http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/gems/umlaut.html. It is pretty cool and shows the evolution of this article from its beginning to early 2005, going into more details of some points (Spinal tap, Germanic feel, some vandalism). Really cool to watch! -- Chris 73 Talk 02:32, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

Ack - it is listed above under #Flash-based commentary already. -- Chris 73 Talk 02:48, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

In case anyone's interested...the bit about the "nazi"-look of umlauts caught my eye... especially when you consider this article... Tom e r ^talk 05:16, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links and references - ambiguous

Can someone split those into which are which? By that title, possible only two are used as proper references, and we don't know which ones. This is very important for featured articles. Thanks - Taxman 17:10, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Die Ärzte

You mention they used the three dots to dinstinguish it from the real meaning, but maybe this meaning should also be given? I don't know how common (maybe like "kindergarten") the use or at least the meaning "Ärzte" and "Arzt" in english educated cultures is, but i'd suggest to give some sort of eplanation. (it means medical doctor somehow)

It means "medical doctors". Not just "somehow". :-)

David Marjanović native speaker of German 2005/6/30 david.marjanovic[at]gmx.at

[edit] "Heavy Metal" or "Heavy-metal"?

Why the sudden change to hyphenation, i.e., from "Heavy Metal Umlaut" to "Heavy-metal umlaut"? If the discussion is of metallurgy "heavy-metal" would be correct as an adjective, but the musical genre is known as "heavy metal" -- without the hyphen even as an adjective. Reference: All Music Guide --Christophernicus 06:12, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree - "heavy metal umlaut" seems to be virtually universal usage, as can be seen from the incoming links, so I've moved it back. sjorford →•← 10:16, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Maxïmo Park

Not Heavy Metal, and I have no idea if they are correctly used or not, but Maxïmo Park have rock dots... Auz 00:15, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

"Correctly used." Ha ha. As if any use of the heavy metal umlaut was correct. Or not. --Christophernicus 06:34, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] An umlaut and half

Seeing the logo for Nintendogs (where's the three-dots diacritic when I need it?) reminded me of this phenomenon. Obviously this is designed to look like a dog's paw.... -- Smjg 19:51, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Consider also the three dots placed over each "a" in Hobbitish writings in a certain series of movies (borrowed from the mark for /a/ in the syllabic form of tengwar). —Tamfang 20:58, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Korn

The Korn logo is not faux-cyrllic; from the faux-cyrillic page:

Faux Cyrillic should not be confused with imitations of small child's erroneous writing of mirrored letters, such as the mirrored "R" in the Toys Я Us toy store name.

The scrawled band name is intended to look child-like.

[edit] Error in this article

In the sentence, "Interestingly, the standard German pronunciation of Motor is similar to the standard English pronunciation of 'motor', the umlaut over the second 'o' requiring, in German, the fronting of the vowel," the first "Motor" should, I believe, have an umlaut over the second "o," as the rest of the sentence states, and also in order to be true--the German pronounciation of "Motor" is somewhat like "Moe tore," while "Motör" would be somewhat like "Moe turr," which is similar to the standard English pronunciation of "motor."

It seems plain that that's what the author intended; I would just edit the article myself but I don't know how. (Unsigned comment by 68.252.251.147)

Now changed as per above. (Note to 68.252.251.147: in fact, editing the article itself is as easy as making a comment here: you just click on the "Edit" link and do what you think's right. I suspect you might make a good Wikipedia editor, so go ahead and dive in, here and elsewhere!) --A bit iffy 08:39, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

What is going on here? There is absolutely no German word "Motör". The German translation of the English word "motor" is "Motor" - umlautless. This section of the article should be removed

[edit] AFD result

This article was nominated for deletion on 7 February 2006. The result of the discussion was Speedy keep.

[edit] Mötley Crüe

Can someone add this wherever it's appropriate? I don't know whether it's gratuituous or non-gratuituous, though I think it's the former based on the article about the band. It was the only one I thought of before I read the article.

It's already mentioned in the History section. — sjorford (talk) 11:34, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I missed it. Thanks for pointing this out.

Another band with a heavy-metal umlaut in its name (Tröjan) ran into similar problems when they played in Sweden. Apparently, the audience interpreted the band's name as "The Sweater"; that evoked very un-metal-like images of a "cozy, all-wool group" (in the words of one Swedish reviewer). --ISNorden 21:25, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Heavy metal Runic

I see the umlaut as being a parallel to the Heavy Metal fonts, which are often either Gothic or Runic in style. Heavy metal "runic" probably deserves an article to itself, I can think of about a dozen examples. --MacRusgail 18:09, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other languages

I've made a minor change for clarity: the purpose that an umlaut serves in English when it apperas in "Chloë" is very different from the purposes it serves in German. It was misleading to include both mentions in the same sentence. Durova 17:10, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

If you want to be a real pedant (!), "Chloë" uses a diaeresis, not an umlaut. Both are two dots above a vowel, but while the umlaut represents a former "e", the diaeresis represents a vowel which is not pronounced as a diphthong or is pronounced separately, e.g. "Brontë" (not pronounced "Brontt")--MacRusgail. In a well designed font, diaeresis and umlaut are very slightly different. 17:53, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Further, "Chloë" without the diaresis could be read as "Chlö" in German, as an o-Umlaut is usually escaped as "oe" for historical reasons (several family names feature escaped umlauts as the proper writing -- mostly because umlauts are actually composed of a vowel plus a supercased "e", historically).

Nobody familiar with the name would think to read it as "Chlö" and most people not familiar with foreign names don't know the meaning of the e with diaresis anyway, so the whole thing is a bit redundant in German (also, German keyboards don't have a diaresis modifier, but only the three actual umlaut keys, so there's no easy way to type it).

The umlauts are, however, never ambiguous in German as nobody puts a diaresis on an a, o or u without the intention of making it an umlaut. The i and e with diaresis are not ambiguous because no such umlauts exist (even though they are rather rare). — Ashmodai ^{(talk · contribs)} 00:44, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken word version

I have started working on a spoken word version of this article, as requested. Does anyone have an opinion on how the character "ø" should be spoken? Should I just pronounce it? Or? Aguerriero (talk) 18:42, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nativ perception

"Ironically, these sounds tend to be perceived as "weaker" or "lighter" than the vowels represented by un-umlauted u, o, and a, thus failing to create the intended impression of strength and darkness."

Sorce? I'm Finnish and mildly synesthetic: while I agree that Ä is "lighter" than A, Ö feels much darker than O (color association: black and purple respectivly). The sound of German Ü I also find slightly "lighter" than that of U, but as it's spelled Y in Finnish, the caracter Ü does seem a bit darker.

Counting original gratuitious occurences only, I find 56 Ös, 40 Üs and 28 Äs - clearly in favor of Ö, so I would suggest remooving the quoted passage. (And yes, I kno' I just did original research, but it does not nullify the fact. I'm not suggesting compiling those stats in the article itself, mind you.)

Any other North Europeans around here? What do you think? --Tropylium 10:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NYC Band "Umlaut Overload"

At some time in the past - which could have been any time in the last 25 years - there was a band with the name "Umlaut Overload". I seem to recall that there was a diaresis over every letter but do not recall exactly. Also, this band was probably shortlived. (I have nothing more to add; I just thought the name was so funny that it deserved to be mentioned, if not in the article, then here on the talk page.) Hi There 20:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The German word Umlaut

It is said in the arcticle, that "um-" is a prefix often used with verbs involving "twist". That is right. But there are several meanings of "um-". The meaning "twist" occurs in words like "umkreisen" (=to move around something on a circular trajectory) or perhaps in "umzingeln" (to encircle). The prefix can also have different meanings. For example in the word "Umzug" (=relocation) or in "Umbruch" (=a grat change) it states a change that happens. There is also the preposition "um" in German. It means something like "near" or "besides". This meaning also occurs in prefixes of words loke "Umgebung" (=the area surrounding you). The real meaning of the prefix in the word "Umlaut" is not obvious even to native german speakers, but it is surely not related to "twist". It is more lkikely to be mean something like "near", "similiar" or "changed". c

According to webster (1913): umlaut \um"laut\ ([=oo]m"lout), n. [G., from um about + laut sound.] (Philol.)
The euphonic modification of a root vowel sound by the influence of a, u, or especially i, in the syllable which formerly followed. Spearhead 22:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article removal?

Editors of this article, please check the featured article review link above. This article is in danger of losing its featured status. From current discussion, the main problems appear to be shortage of references and listiness. Please participate and address the problems while matter remains open. Durova 05:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mmm...

I think this article should be Heavy metal ümlaut? jengod

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