Schon vs. Schön

[theoisbae]

What is the difference between Schon and Schön besides the Umlaut?

[zezinho25]

"Schön" means beautiful. i.e. Die Blume ist schön. (The flower is beautiful.)
"Schon" means already -or- yet. i.e. Ich habe schon gegessen. (I have already eaten.)

[theoisbae]

ohhhh! that makes so much sense now! Thank you so much! Are there any other words like that? Ones where if you take away the Umlaut it changes the meaning?

[biertopf]

Think of ä, ö, and ü as own letters, different from a, o, and u.
The meaning of a word with and the same word without umlaut therefore is (at least almost always) different.

[theoisbae]

hmmm. I like it! I think that putting that into my mind will stick! Thanks for the advise!

[AbunPang]

Plenty.

Often it only marks a different form of the same word (although “different form” includes derived words):

• Mutter (mother) – Mütter (mothers)
• Bruder (brother) – Brüder (brothers)
• Vogel (bird) – Vögel (birds)
• [wir] taten (we did) – [wir] täten (we would do)
• [er] brauchte (he needed) – [er] bräuchte (he would need)
• Fahrt (trip (in a vehicle)) – [er] fährt (he drives/goes [in a vehicle])

But there are a few cases like the above as well, where the forms with and without umlaut are entirely different words. Probably the example which people bring up the most is schwül (stuffy, hot and humid) – schwul (gay). A few more are:

• fordern (to demand) – fördern (to promote, to support)
• drucken (to print) – drücken (to press) (I guess these are etymologically related though)
• losen (to draw lots) – lösen (to loosen, to solve)
• Bar (bar, pub) – Bär (bear)
• Ode (ode (a type of song)) – öde (bleak, barren; dull)

[theoisbae]

thanks! I will take not of these for sure! :)

[AbunPang]

You don’t need to if you take biertopf’s advice and try to think of umlauts as their own independent vowels ;) They do sometimes occur in derived forms, but the same can be said, for example, about English “oo” vs. “ee” (as in “goose – geese” which is indeed umlaut, just like German Gans – Gänse. It’s just that umlaut has stopped being a productive phenomenon in English long ago, so people just think of these words as irregular).

[zezinho25]

Sometimes the umlaut simply changes the word into the plural. i.e. die Mutter (the mother) becomes die Mütter (the mothers); der Vater (the father) becomes die Väter (the fathers). It just depends on the word. ^_^