The alphabet and spelling aloud

German uses the same twenty-six letters as English, plus three vowels with two dots — ä, ö and ü, the umlauts — and ß, a sharp s. The umlauts are letters in their own right and not decorated ones: schon (already) and schön (beautiful) are two different words. Where a keyboard has no umlauts, German writes ae, oe and ue instead, so Müller becomes Mueller — never plain Muller.

The names of the letters are worth learning early, because they are what you say on the phone, at a hotel desk or in an office. Most are simply the sound plus a vowel: B is "bay", D is "day", K is "kah". The vowels are the trap: A is "ah", E is "ay", I is "ee", O is "oh" and U is "oo" — so an English speaker spelling out a name says E and I the wrong way round. Others to watch: J is "yot", V is "fow", W is "vay", Y is "üpsilon", Z is "tset" and ß is "ess-tset".

To ask how something is spelled, say Wie schreibt man das? or Können Sie das bitte buchstabieren? A double letter is spelled with Doppel- in front of it: Anna is A, Doppel-N, A. And an umlaut is named by its sound or with the word mit: Müller, mit ü.