Examples of national alphabets from various toponymic guidelines:

• Are there special signs (diacritical marks, non-standard Roman letters) included?

• Which writing-system is used (officially or otherwise) for the country’s language(s)?

• What is the alphabetisation, i.e. the sequence of the letters in the alphabet?

• As far as the alphabet use is phonetic, which (combinations of) letters represent which sounds?

In Austria:

• Standard German is written in the Roman script.
  
  
• The alphabet is augmented with a non-standard Roman letter ß (‘scharfes s’) and one diacritical mark for vowel discrimination (a diaeresis or ‘Umlaut’ to be combined with a, o or u).
  
  
• Of ß only a lower-case variant exists; where capitalization is needed, it is transliterated by ss.
  
  
• Previously another variant of the Roman script was in use, called German or Gothic script. Nowadays it does not occur anymore, and it is therefore not further explained.
  
  
• As German spelling is not always clearly indicative of pronunciation, especially in the case of geographical names (which often show an archaic spelling, or originate from another language or dialects).
  
  
• The pronunciation of the names of Austrian settlements is listed name by name in a Gazetteer of Austria. The Gazetteer uses the IPA-alphabet.
  
  
• A general pronunciation key is nevertheless presented in the Guidelines.

Back to the checklist of Toponymic guidelines