Kaptenen wrote:That is not a accent mark, it is a letter, we have the
letters Å,Ä and Ö and it sounds quite different. Why are
you yanks so indifferent?
Technically, the double-dot mark over the o (or any other vowel character) is called an umlaut. It marks a change in pronunciation over the standard pronunciation of the vowel. The pronunciation change may vary from language to language, but it's fairly common in German, and the way my voice teacher in college explained its effect in German was you shape your mouth as if you're going to pronounce the regular vowel, then you pronounce a long E sound. Trust me, it does sound different. Modern German spelling has mostly done away with it, replacing it with a trailing e. So ö now = oe, ä now = ae, etc. Not sure about how other languages would reflect it.
The MS keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Shift+colon key then press the desired vowel.
1632 authors use it a lot.