German question (easiest question ever)

They call that an "umlaut" in German. The French just call it "deux points" (two dots). I know how to do that with the French layout on the keyboard, but couldn't say how you'd get it with a German layout. If you right-click on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen (in Windows), the option at the top is "Toolbars." From there, you can set up other language layouts for your English-language "qwerty" keyboard.

Für Elise

I did that using the "French (Canada)" layout. I was just showing off.

Pretty good showing off, Setanta.

Yes, it's called "umlaut"(vowel) and besides the ü, we also have an ä und an ö
When my daughter started learning German she especially liked the doted
"umlaute" as she was convinced that they're the happy version of the regular vowels.

Für Elise is one of my favorites, such a beautiful piece of music.

I have a Mac, so for me it's option+u+u, or option+u+o, and option+u+a

In Windows hold down ALT while typing the appropriate number code on your numeric keypad to create characters with umlaut accent marks.
For Windows, the number codes for the upper case letters are:
Ä 0196
Ë 0203
Ï 0207
Ö 0214
Ü 0220
Ÿ 0159

For Windows, the number codes for the lower case letters are:
ä 0228
ë 0235

Ä Ë Ï etc.

Joe (This is fÜn !)Nation

Addendum: In English the word for those two little dots is diaresis or diarisis (not really sure of the spelling). It's one of the so-called diacritical marks, along with the tilde (~) and long marks and . . .

Thank you all for your help, very interesting stuff

Just as a post script Merry Andrew it is spelled diæresis

Bit like the way Aesop is, or would be if I could join the ae

Yes, they are umlauts.

Whenever you are writing on the computer, and you don't know how to make an umlaut, all you have to do is put an "e" after the vowel you wanted to umlaut.

For instance, if you don't know how to make an " ä " (by holding alt and typing 132), all you need to do is write "ae". Instead of writing Äpfel, you can write Aepfel. This is perfectly acceptible German.

The Turks use the letter ü a lot.

Pops up in Spanish once in a while, too.

In German if you're unable to type in an umlaut, then it's acceptable to write "feur" instead of "für" to show the pronunciation/the fact that there's an umlaut because sometimes it could change the meaning.
eg.
Bruder = Brother
Brüder = Brothers.
In this case if one was unable to write ü, but wanted to indicate that there was more than one brother, then you'd write "Brueder."

[en] umlauts = [german] Umlaute

On a mac:

alt/option + u/U + letter

e.g. alt + u + u = ü