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“Then I remember seeing that they weren’t there anymore.” “I thought that was kind of neat because you don’t see that very often,” he said. Lovdokken, an optometrist in Lindström, said he recalled, many years ago, “mentally making a note” of the umlauts in the highway signs. In Lindström, 40 miles from downtown Minneapolis and surrounded by lakes, the Swedish influence is unmistakable: a blue-and-white water tower near the highway bids visitors “Välkommen till Lindström.” The town was named after Daniel Lindström, its founder, and it still receives 3,000 to 4,000 visitors from Sweden every year. Nearly one in three of the state’s 5.5 million residents claim Scandinavian roots. Minnesota wears its Scandinavian roots proudly, serving traditional foods like lefse on holidays, decorating homes with handmade Nordic crafts and cheering for its Vikings in football. It does not use them for Slavic, Scandinavian and other languages that are less familiar to American editors and readers, as such usage would more likely lead to errors.) (The New York Times generally uses accent marks only with French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German words and names. You can’t just take them away.” She added that while the term umlaut is often used, many linguists consider the “ö” in modern Swedish to be a distinct letter. “It’s a significant letter with its own sound. “These are not just two little dots,” said the Swedish native. Lena Norrman, a lecturer for Swedish and Scandinavian studies at the University of Minnesota, said that linguistically, the loss is significant. “Even if I have to drive to Lindström and paint the umlauts on the city limit signs myself, I’ll do it.” Mark Dayton, a Democrat, said in the statement. “Nonsensical rules like this are exactly why people get frustrated with government,” Gov. So in a change that irritated some Sweden-adoring people here, Lindström became Lindstrom.īut in an announcement that was indignant, a little quirky and very Minnesotan, the governor intervened on Wednesday, releasing a statement that promised that the umlauts on the signs would be restored, and fast. According to a city official, the Minnesota Department of Transportation denied the town’s request that the umlauts remain, citing a rule that road signs have only letters in a standard alphabet. Some of the residents of Lindström, Minn., did not even realize that the umlauts were gone.įor decades, the cheerful twin dots had hovered over the “o” in Lindström on the green highway signs that welcomed visitors to the small hamlet - population, 4,442 - that had been settled by Swedish immigrants in the 1850s.Īfter a highway project in 2012, the signs came down and were replaced with new ones.