This document specifies a set of Label Generation Rules (LGR) for the German language using a language-specific repertoire for the second level domain or domains identified above. The format of this file follows [RFC 7940]. This LGR is adapted from the “Reference LGR for the Second Level for the German Language” [Ref-LGR-de-Latn], for details, see Change History below.
Standalone LGR: This LGR is designed to be used in a zone that does not cater to IDNs other than those valid under this LGR. This LGR lacks features that would allow its use in the context of another LGR in the same zone, and it may contain other features incompatible with such use.
Almost all references converge on 30 Latin code points.
DENIC eG has published an extensive IDN character list used for the German (.de) ccTLD [700] and NIC.AT has deposited a more restrained Latin script IDN list for the Austrian (.at) ccTLD [701] that notably excludes “ß”. These lists include many code points needed for spelling personal or business names from neighboring countries. Most of them have been excluded here, since adding them would be more appropriate for a script-based LGR (or subset thereof).
Letters documented in some references, but not included:
U+00E1 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE
U+00E3 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH TILDE
U+00E5 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE
U+00E6 LATIN SMALL LETTER AE
U+00EB LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH DIAERESIS
U+00EC LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH GRAVE
U+00ED LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH ACUTE
U+00EE LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH CIRCUMFLEX
U+00EF LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH DIAERESIS
U+00F0 LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH
U+00F1 LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE
U+00F2 LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH GRAVE
U+00F3 LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH ACUTE
U+00F8 LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH STROKE
U+00FA LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH ACUTE
U+00FD LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH ACUTE
U+00FE LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN
U+00FF LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS
U+0101 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH MACRON
U+0103 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH BREVE
U+0105 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH OGONEK
U+0107 LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH ACUTE
U+0109 LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CIRCUMFLEX
U+010B LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH DOT ABOVE
U+010D LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CARON
U+010F LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH CARON
U+0111 LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH STROKE
U+0113 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH MACRON
U+0115 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH BREVE
U+0117 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH DOT ABOVE
U+0119 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH OGONEK
U+011D LATIN SMALL LETTER G WITH CIRCUMFLEX
U+011F LATIN SMALL LETTER G WITH BREVE
U+0121 LATIN SMALL LETTER G WITH DOT ABOVE
U+0123 LATIN SMALL LETTER G WITH CEDILLA
U+0129 LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH TILDE
U+012B LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH MACRON
U+012D LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH BREVE
U+012F LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH OGONEK
U+0131 LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I
U+0135 LATIN SMALL LETTER J WITH CIRCUMFLEX
U+0137 LATIN SMALL LETTER K WITH CEDILLA
U+0138 LATIN SMALL LETTER KRA
U+013A LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH ACUTE
U+013C LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CEDILLA
U+013E LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CARON
U+0142 LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH STROKE
U+0144 LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH ACUTE
U+0146 LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH CEDILLA
U+0148 LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH CARON
U+014B LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG
U+014D LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH MACRON
U+014F LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH BREVE
U+0151 LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH DOUBLE ACUTE
U+0153 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE OE
U+0155 LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH ACUTE
U+0157 LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH CEDILLA
U+0159 LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH CARON
U+015B LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH ACUTE
U+015D LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CIRCUMFLEX
U+015F LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CEDILLA
U+0161 LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CARON
U+0163 LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CEDILLA
U+0165 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH CARON
U+0167 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH STROKE
U+0169 LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH TILDE
U+016B LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH MACRON
U+016D LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH BREVE
U+016F LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH RING
U+0171 LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DOUBLE ACUTE
U+0173 LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH OGONEK
U+0175 LATIN SMALL LETTER W WITH CIRCUMFLEX
U+0177 LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH CIRCUMFLEX
U+017A LATIN SMALL Z WITH ACUTE
U+017C LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH DOT ABOVE
U+017E LATIN SMALL Z WITH CARON
A few sources, among them [700], provide in their repertoire for code points from all the European languages, Danish, Polish, Turkish, Romanian, Czech and so on. These have been excluded.
A number of letters not considered essential to writing the core vocabulary of the language are nevertheless in common use. Where they have not been added to the core repertoire, they are flagged as “extended-cp” in the table of code points. A context rule is provided that by default will prohibit labels with such extended code points. To support extended single code points or code point sequences, delete the context “extended-cp” from their repertoire definition.
The code points specified as extended are mostly those used for loanwords from French, which are accessible on German keyboards and commonly retained in spelling.
U+00DF LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S is used in Germany and Austria, but not in Switzerland, where the spelling “ss” is used instead. In addition, the letter is normally uppercased as “SS”. This might suggest it as a candidate for a variant mapping. While both the Latin Variant Issues Report [VIP] as well as DENIC, the operator of the .de ccTLD orginally decided that no variant mapping was warranted, several registries show “ß” and “ss” as simple variants in their IDN tables. The Root Zone LGR for the Latin script [RZ-LGR-Latn] has come to a somewhat nuanced conclusion. The variant scheme developed there attempts to address IDNA 2003 compatibility issues by making “ss” an allocatable fallback variant of U+00DF. An original label may contain U+00DF in any position, and if it does, the version with “ss” substituted for all instances of U+00DF would be “allocatable”, but not the other way around. By default, this “fallback” variant scheme is enabled in this LGR. (See “Optionally-Enabled Variants” below).
No other variants are applicable when using the LGR in a standalone fashion.
Variants Limited to Standalone Use This LGR is not intended for use with LGRs for other languages or scripts in the same zone. The LGR does not define any “blocked” variants with code points in other languages or script that would prevent malicious registration of duplicate labels perceived as the same by users. As a result of transitivity, the scheme of internal variants defined here would have to be imposed on other LGRs that contain copies or variants of the affected code points.
If it is desired to support multiple languages in the same zone, the preferred method would be to support the corresponding script LGRs, which cater to the use of multiple languages, and are designed with the possibility of concurrent use in mind.
Certain variants in this LGR are defined as optionally enabled. They are using the context rule “enabled”. This context rule matches any label (it always succeeds). Any variant marked with when=“enabled” (in the XML file) is in force, while marking it with not-when=“enabled” causes the variant definition to be ignored in processing. This allows these variants to be disabled, for example, to better match legacy practice for a given zone.
Care must be taken to enable or disable variants so that all variant mappings to and from the same code point are either enabled or disabled at the same time, ensuring that all enabled variant mappings remain symmetric and transitive.
The specification of variants in this LGR follows the guidelines in [RFC 8228].
This LGR does not define named character classes.
The LGR includes the rules and actions to implement the following restrictions, some of which are mandated by the IDNA protocol. They are marked with ⍟ and included here by default. A special context rule enables optional variants by default.
when="enabled" in the xml will be active, while any with not-when="enabled" will be inactive.This LGR includes the default actions for LGRs as well as the action needed to invalidate labels with misplaced combining marks. They are marked with ⍟. For a description see [RFC 7940].
Because this LGR defines allocatable fallback variants the following default actions are applicable.
These actions resolve as “allocatable” any label where all variants are of type “fallback”, and as “valid” any label where all variants are of type “r-original”. Labels with a mix of variant types are resolved as “blocked”.
To account for original code points in a permuted variant, reflexive variant mappings with an “r-” prefix are used. (See [RFC 7940]). In particular, the mapping type “r-original” is given to any code point that has a fallback mapping, but that appears in its non-fallback form in the original label, and thus “maps to itself”.
Default actions that are triggered by the LGR-specific variant types described above limit the “allocatable” variant labels to those variants resulting from the substitution of U+00DF by “ss”, while disallowing mixed use of variants with or without subsitution, except as in the original applied-for label. The use of such variants is "optionally_enabled_variants">optionally enabled in this LGR.
Note that the mapping types for variants are not symmetric: they depend on which code point is considered the source or the target in a given mapping. As specified in [RFC 7940], when mapping types are evaluated code points in a label that are unchanged use the type of their “reflexive” mapping. Per [RFC 7940] the actions are always applied one after the other, and the evaluation stops at the first action that assigns a disposition to a given label.
The LGR in this document has been adapted from the corresponding Reference LGR for the Second Level. The Second Level Reference LGR for the German Language was developed by Michel Suignard and Asmus Freytag, including input by Michael Everson, Nicholas Ostler, and Wil Tan, and based on multiple open public consultations.
Language tag has been updated.
Unicode Version has been updated.
Variant for U+00DF has been defined to match [RZ-LGR-Latn]. This fallback variant is enabled here by default, but is marked as “enabled” to allow registries to deactivate it if required.
This version modifies the Second Level Reference LGR for the German Language [Ref-LGR-de-Latn] by injecting the complete (maximal) set of cross-repertoire variants, including any imposed by transitivity. Injected variants are marked by special comments. Any character classes, context and WLE rules required for testing are also imported. In all other respects, description or annotations have not been updated to reflect the injected variants. Any LGR elements that might pose a possible conflict when the LGR is used with the Common LGR for cross-repertoire variant resolution are clearly marked. All modifications are carried out mechanically; there may be an occasional context rule or similar that is injected because its definition relates to some repertoire element even though it can never be triggered by any label valid under the modified LGR.
General references for the language:
Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung, “Regeln und Wörterverzeichnis”, München und Mannheim, February 2006 (with corrections from 2010) https://www.rechtschreibrat.com
Duden. 1996. Rechtschreibung der deutschen Sprache. 21. Auflage. Mannheim: Dudenverlag. ISBN 3-411-04011-4
Wahrig, Gerhard. 1974. Deutsches Wörterbuch. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Lexikon-Verlag. ISBN 3-570-06588-X
Wikipedia: “German orthography”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_alphabet
Omniglot: German (deutsch) https://www.omniglot.com/writing/german.htm
In addition, the following references were consulted:
In the listing of the repertoire by code point, references starting from [0] refer to the version of the Unicode Standard in which the corresponding code point was initially encoded. Other references (starting from [100]) document usage of code points. Entries in the table may have multiple source reference values. In the listing of whole label evaluation and context rules, reference [150] indicates the source for common rules. For more details, see the Table of References below.
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