Grammar

German uses the familiar Latin alphabet plus ä, ö, ü and ß. A capital noun is not necessarily a name: die Wohnung means apartment. ß and ss are not universally interchangeable in standard German spelling. When a system cannot accept umlauts, the conventional substitutions are ae, oe, ue, not simply a, o, u; ß may be represented as ss.

Proper names should follow the spelling shown on the person's documents.

For spelling aloud, German letter names differ from English. Especially notice J = Jot, V = Vau, W = We, Y = Ypsilon, Z = Zett. The spoken names of A/E/I also differ from English. Use actual audio rather than English letter names when practising.

Example

Mein Nachname ist Meier: M, E, I, E, R. Können Sie das bitte buchstabieren?

English

My surname is Meier: M, E, I, E, R. Can you spell that, please?

Hinglish

Mera surname Meier hai: M, E, I, E, R. Kya aap iski spelling bata sakte hain?

Practice personal information in both directions: hear and write an email address; spell your name without displaying it; distinguish a street number from a postcode. For an email address, Punkt means dot and at is commonly used for @.