 The German ü is treated as a variant of y and sometimes retained in foreign names and words , e.g. <unk> ( " <unk> / granola " ) . A proper diaeresis may very exceptionally be seen in elaborated style ( for instance : " <unk> " ) . The German convention of writing ä and ö as ae and oe if the characters are unavailable is an unusual convention for speakers of modern Swedish . Despite the availability of all these characters in the Swedish national top @-@ level Internet domain and other such domains , Swedish sites are frequently labelled using a and o , based on visual similarity ( mainly to avoid lingering technical problems with the use of characters which are outside of the limited 7 @-@ bit ASCII set ) . 
