Cologne Travel Forum

I am planning to visist Cologne and Dusseldorf in mid September. I founf the VT forum for Cologne, but not for Dusseldorf. Is my spelling incorrect? Did they change the name of this city? Why am I having trouble?

This came up just recently...the real name of "Dusseldorf" is either "Düsseldorf" or "Duesseldorf"...if you don't have easy access to "ü", then use the second spelling and you'll find it...

Bill

It's because there should be an umlaut on the 'u', so you have to spell it 'duesseldorf' if you have no umlaut.

Weird, but not unusual in the VT database.

Here it is:

http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Germany/Land_Nordrhein_Westfalen/Duesseldorf-67466/TravelGuide-Duesseldorf.html

Cologne called Köln in German.

Or "Koeln" to substitute the Umlaut, but never "Koln".

Some things just don't make sense. Using the spelling Dusseldorf, I had no trouble booking a hotel and airline tickets on 2 different airlines online.
I knew the German spelling for Cologne, but VT accepted Cologne.
Since no one has asked a question about Dusseldorf, since 30 June, perhaps I'm not the only one who had trouble.
Time to change the spelling???

Time to change the spelling? Because other languages do not have the umlaut?

You should first contact the Düsseldorf city council if they agree... ;-)

The internet accepts a lot of misspellings - nevertheless they are still plain wrong.

Website owners who deal a lot with foreigners have probably 'taught' their pages to understand the most common mistakes to avoid trouble.

Normally, using the name of a city in its native language is best (of course), but we in English have established variant names for a lot of cities: Rome for Roma, Munich for München, Venice for Venezia, Cologne for Köln, and so on. So most search engines in English will allow both the real name and the variant name. But "Dusseldorf" has never been a proper variant spelling for Düsseldorf; it's just been a misspelling that lots of English speakers do. As someone very correctly pointed out, the Internet is full of misspellings and you can't blame people for not checking all of them ;-).

So, if it helps, remember that for German, "ü" is written as "ue" in English orthography, "ö" is written as "oe", and "ß" is written at "ss"...but, I guess, if you never saw the right spelling in the first place, this may not help :-( ...

Bill

Time to change the spelling???

I don't think people living in Düsseldorf would be interested in changing their city's name into 'Dusseldorf'. In German 'Dussel' means fool or berk and 'Dorf' means village. So Dusseldorf would mean 'The village of the fools' ;o))

People living in Cologne (who always have a rivalry with Düsseldorf) however will say that the change you suggested would be appropriate ;o))))

*giggle*

Bernd is right. No chance.

I am only finding fault with the VIRTUAL TOURIST website. This is the only website that I have used that doesn't recognize the "Dusseldorf" spelling that would be used by anyone who doesn't speak German and lives outside of Germany.

The VT database was bought in, and is updated and changed as time allows. If this really troubles you, then why not write to feedback@virtualtourist.com? They will, I am sure, fix matters as soon as they have the opportunity to do so.

Agree. There is nothing to be "fixed" in terms of allowing obvious misspellings. Can't people be expected to figure out the correct names of the places they want to visit?

To be honest, I've learned how to use the 'ue' for umlauts through VT. It's not something I would have otherwise considered, or which automatically sprang to mind. And I speak German (badly, admittedly, but I can pronounce it reaonably accurately). Finding the correct phonic combination to replicate the sound of an accented letter is not always easy.

But I'd probably have googled for the correct spelling then cut & pasted it, if it didn't work without the umlaut.

It's not something of which I would be critical. It's my lack (now remedied), rather than that of the database.

The Cologne people would strongly support Düsseldorf to change into Dussel dorf ;)

Since Germany has had an orthography reform to make spelling easier for the "Dussel" nobody can spell correctly anymore... I am impressed that VT can still produce German place names correctly.

Germany has found a valid solution that enables everyone who cannot type the Umlaut to use a correct spelling: The Umlaut may be substituted by inserting an extra "e".
The alternative "Koeln" instead of "Köln", "Fuessen" instead of "Füssen", "Baer" istead of "Bär" is allowed as perfectly correct spelling.
Simply omitting the Umlaut, however, would change the pronunciation and is plain wrong.

I'm glad the VT database "knows" this, and I hope it won't be changed.

OK now, I suggest that we stop bashing that poor poster who simply didn't know that a missing 'ü'-key is substituted by typing 'ue' instead.

I have to admit, that I myself didn't know that the swedish 'a' with the circle on top (that I can't produce with my keyboard) is substituted by 'aa'. I would have tried to write a plain 'a' instead and maybe would have run into the same problem.

Therefore tolerating 'u' instead of 'ü' in a database would not be the worst idea, even if it's grammatically wrong. As long as there is no unitary international alphabet we'll sometimes have to improvise in order to inable a worldwide use of systems like VT.