German orthography is generally consistent in its representation of i-umlaut. The umlaut diacritic, consisting of two dots above the vowel, is used for the fronted vowels, making the historical process much more visible in the modern language than is the case in English: a – ä, o – ö, u – ü, au – äu. This is a neat solution when pairs of words with and without umlaut mutation are compared, as in umlauted plurals like "Mutter – Mütter" ("mother" – "mothers").