Umlaut (linguistics)

An umlaut is a little two dots that we put over some letters in certain languages like German. The dots make the letter sound different than it normally does. It's like when you put a hat on a person, it changes their appearance a little bit. In German, the "u" in "Müller" sounds different than the "u" in "Muller" because of the little umlaut dots on top of it. That's because the dots tell us to pronounce the "u" sound a little bit higher up in our mouth, kind of like making a smiley face with your mouth. It's a way of changing the sound of the letter without having to write a completely different letter.