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"ue" is a well accepted substitute for ü when non-German keyboards are used. Germans themselves use that spelling when using foreign keyboard. Same with "oe"/ö and "ae"/ä. What isn't acceptable is Bluthner or Bosendorfer.

Well, Blüthner in London have the following website address: www.bluthner.co.uk

My German is very poor, even worse than my English, so I have been obliged to go and look up this usage and I must say that Ando is quite correct. My apologies to anyone who feels that I have questioned their ability to spell.

I must say in passing that I had no idea that English keyboards were not able to write ö ü or ä, presumably the same is true of ë. This must make life very tiresome for anybody called Chloë or Noël.

You mean Chloe and Noel, right? In USA these are fairly common names and usually their legal names don't have the "extra" symbols on them. Of course I understand it is different for other places in the world.

You can write these symbols from a USA keyboard, but it's not actually on the keyboard so you have to remember the strange little procedures (usually involves the ALT key plus a three digit code, or the OPTION key). Naturally the strange little procedures are different for each operating system.

Here it is from my ZAGG keyboard : ü, ë, ä
Yay! (patting self on back).

Wow this thread took a side-trip. Of course my post is only driving the car further off the road.

Actually, you can on 'English' keyboards - you just have to know the way to do it.

Try alt + 130 for é, 160 for á
alt + 132 for ä, 137 for ë, 148 for ö, 129 for ü, 139 for ï
alt + 135 for ç

I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro laptop, which presumably is American, and the procedures are totally different.....

bennevis,

您确定
您
çš„
MacBook Proçš„
笔记本
电脑
真的是
美国
的吗
？

(Nín quèdìng nín de MacBook Pro de bǐjìběn diànnǎo zhēn de shì měiguó de ma?)

Bösendorfers aren't German, they're Austrian, and have a different sound because of the difference in the rim. Instead of hard plywood--used by Steinway and everyone else--it has a solid spruce rim. The rim, frame and sound board are mechanically one unit.

You can't compare the sound of a Bösendorfer to anything else. To me it's the "softest and warmest" sound available, and I love the way it sounds in the home.

(And I have no trouble typing the ö on my Hebrew Mac keyboard! I just press Caps Lock--which allows input of Roman characters--and type option + u and then o. However, if you don't have the character, oe is acceptable. In fact the domain they have is www.boesendorfer.com. If you type www.bosendorfer.com, you'll be redirected.)

On an iPad, just hold a vowel key and it will pop up a menu for all the accents. Slide your finger up to the desired accent and you are done. On a Windows keyboard, use ALT and the number pad to choose the correct ASCI accent character, for example, ALT 0233 is é, ALT 0246 is ö. All of the alternate characters have asci values between 0200 (È) and 252 (ü).

I find it interesting that this forum is called Piano World, yet many of the american contributers have issues with typing accents and understanding the comments of posters for whom american english is not their native tongue. The forum is more Piano America with a nod to everyone else. I can say this, being an ex-american, yet still an American.

It may be acceptable to them, but not to us.

My point exactly! You said us, meaning US. So how about the rest of Piano World?

Hmmm ... I totally misunderstood the title of the thread. Silly me thought is was about pianos rather than umlauts.

Technically speaking, London is not part of the US.

But a discussion of the political import of umlauts is much more interesting.

Does anyone have comparison recordings of the magnificent Glottisschlag und Söhne and the muscular Sandburg & Stock?

Not yet.

Plus ça change - whatever that means...

There are more Americans living in London, England, Great Britain, United Kingdom, Europe (?), Earth, than there are in London, Ohio, USA, N.America, Earth.

And London, Ontario, Canada, America, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Gal...

Coming back to my original observation (obviously not back to the OP)and avoiding any discussion of American cultural imperialism, it now seems that it is possible to write ü or ö on just about any keyboard. This being the case I am at a loss to understand why anybody would continue to use ue or oe to replace them. They strike me as aesthetically unpleasing and certainly give a false phonetic quality to words in which they are used.

Incedentally, in writing 'aesthetically' I couldn't help wondering if anybody knows how to key a dipthong. (I mean of course a ligature)