As we are approaching that time of the year, this is your friendly reminder/PSA from a Swedish person that the ä in Gävlebocken actually matters and that you should spell accordingly (or don't, I'm not the boss of you, but know you are Wrong)
Å, Ä and Ö are considered separate letters from A and O in Swedish. It would be like me substituting every E with an O when I spell English words, not like removing an accent from a French word. They have their own place in the alphabet!
Ä and A have different vowel qualities which affect sounds around them. Ä is "soft" and A is "hard", which means that Ä changes the pronounciation of certain sounds before it. Like G for example
Gä is pronounced similar to 'yeah' while ga is pronounced with hard/regular g and a long a like in 'garden'. Thus, Gävle and Gavle reads very differently
Same goes for Ö/O, but Å is also hard
It annoys me so much to see it and I can't be alone in this
Pro tip: The same principle applies to other Swedish words, like tumblr's beloved BLÅHAJ. Blahaj is a word with stress on the second syllable and not the first, and also happens to mean 'bullshit/nonsense'. So if you want to talk about your plushie blueshark and not a nonsense thing someone just said, I suggest spelling with an Å.
Don't feel bad if you didn't know this, most people don't. And a lot of other languages do treat letters with diacritics like special versions of the letter (we do it with e and é). I'm telling you this to clear up misconceptions
It's also resulted in the fun phenomenon of so-called "rock dots" wherein bands will put dots on letters in their name because it looks cool, which makes them sound really stupid when pronounced in Swedish. Think Motörhead and Blue öyster cult
