I was mulling over the fact that non-Germans often ignore the two dots over the letters a, o, and e in German (making each of them an Umlaut), at least when pronouncing the words, and so I decided to do the same today.
This part of our town is called Müllheimer Tal or Müll for short. Now if you know a bit of German you might think we called this area “garbage” or “rubbish” (aka Müll) but the name comes from the mills that used to be here next to a little stream which they needed for power. In fact although this would make it Mühle in standard German, we call it Mill in our dialect.
As I said I’ve been mulling over this for the last few minutes.
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pictures imperfect blog 
So how do the two dots over the letters a, o, and e in German affect the pronunciation of words?
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ä is simple for an Englishspeaker – It’s similar to the English a in apple, anxious, app etc.
ö and ü are diffult, I get it. Some English can say the word “müsli” perfectly even for German (and Swiss) ears. If not imagine saying an i (as in invisible) but while pursing your lips (i with kissing I teach my students).
Similar the ö: like an e (as in end) with pursed lips.
If you click on the loudspeaker or arrow sign you can listen to the words: Müsli or München or Müll (if you don’t have the ü on your keyboard, leo.dict accecpt ue instead, i.e. Muesli, Muenchen, Muell). können (koennen), öffnen (oeffnen), Köln (Koeln). I hope that helped and you are not more confused than before.
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Of course, silly me! I forgot the link. https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/M%C3%BChle
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