I mean the “official” or “traditional” alphabet, such as the one
taught in schools to children. Is the ordering the same as
English? Does it include ‘C’, which I notice never seems to show
up in native-German words? Does it include ü, ö, ä, and ß? If
so, where? Does that mean Germans think of the alphabet as
having 30 letters? Or is it less than that with some of them
considered variants? It may seem like a silly question, but my
wife was asking and I honestly don't know because I don't think
I was ever taught these things in German class in college. I
never thought about it at the time. EDIT: To clarify, the
question is: how do native Germans think about their alphabet?
For example, Swedes drop ‘w’ from their alphabet and tack ‘å’,
‘ä’, and ‘ö’ onto the end. Spanish speakers consider ‘ñ’ (and,
depending on who you ask, ‘ch’ and ‘ll’) to be different
letters, but unlike the Swedes they have inserted these into the
alphabet in dictionary order. They do not consider accented
characters like é to be separate let