But, last Monday, an addition to the German alphabet emerged blinking into the daylight after a campaign lasting 130 years - to a hail of indifference. The nervous debutante is the big sister of ...

Have you ever been typing in German in a blaze of BLOCK CAPITAL anger, but been stopped short by the inability to write the next letter of the word SCHEI...? Help is finally at hand. At the end of ...

Listen to the German alphabet. Find out about umlauts and get the lowdown on dialects. Facts, key phrases and the alphabet in many world languages An online German course for beginners in 12 weeks.

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions Stand-up comedian Henning Wehn takes over a German class and ...

D as in "Dora" — or "David"? The Nazis had eliminated Jewish names from the German spelling alphabet. The names are to return, at least symbolically. It is a common situation during a phone call ...

But this is not the only version of a phonetic alphabet to have existed, with the first German version going back to the 1890 Berlin telephone book, in which every letter was assigned a number.

10 revealing facts about German. Get your head around tongue twisters and jokes. It's also available in German with audio.