5 ms·
"über" is, but "ü" and "u" are two different letters (with different pronunciation) in German. (don't know about trademark law, but do speak German)
by phaer 6y ago
"über" is, but "ü" and "u" are two different letters (with different pronunciation) in German.
(don't know about trademark law, but do speak German)
- esrauch 6y agoI actually found it fascinating that in German speaking countries they actually pronounce it as "u" not a "ü" (more like "you-ber"), when as an American it seems clear to me that it's intended to be Über and just didn't write the umlaut.
- jonp888 6y agoGerman has fixed pronunciation rules, there is no through/trough/tough/thought confusion. Of course for some foreign words you have to make an exception. However, Uber has a pretty minimal presence in Germany, so I doubt many people know how it is 'supposed' to be pronounced.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoI’d call it fixed spelling rules rather than pronunciation rules, since the language predates writing it down.
- cycomanic 6y agoLet's agree and call it a 1 to 1 mapping.
- Fnoord 6y agoWhen I learned German on high school, it was allowed to replace umlaut. For example, instead of über, you could say ueber. Ie. effectively replacing the umlaut with its vanilla/plain vowel variant plus an e. You can do the same with ß by replacing it with two s (mind to write it like). Tho I'm not sure its correct German in all German-speaking regions I found Germans would understand me. It being useful as my keyboard layout wasn't qwertz or equiv.
- mafuy 6y agoI'm German, can confirm the replacements you mention is universally understood here. In case you ever want to type German, have a look at using the US-Int layout on your US keyboard. It adds keyboard combinations like Alt+S = ß, "+U = Ü etc. It is a little cumbersome, but probably good enough for occasional foreign languages.
- Fnoord 6y agoI like how SwiftKey and macOS deal with it. Long press key gives options for accents.
- esrauch 6y agoI was actually in Zurich not Germany. People were genuinely confused if I asked them why they didn't pronounce it Über ("That's clearly just not how it's spelled"). As a native English speaker it's just hard to wrap my head around having they much confidence in spelling based pronunciation.
- tyfon 6y agoI think in many English speaking countries there is little understanding that these are actually distinct characters in other countries. It also seems popular to use the Danish/Norwegian ø instead of o, one example is an energy drink called mønster. I think they meant to write monster but tried to be cool, however mønster is a real word in Norwegian that translates to the English "pattern". Monster in Norwegian is the same as monster in English. For reference, ø sounds like the i in the English word bird or e in herd or herbs.
- caseyohara 6y agoI don't think Monster energy drinks use the ø character. It has a vertical line through the o and is likely just stylistic. https://i.imgur.com/1PCs1a3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/1PCs1a3.jpg
- btach 6y agoGreek phi
- caseyohara 6y agoYeah it's more like a phi