The Scandinavian languages , by contrast , treat the characters with diacritics '' ä '' , '' ö '' and '' å '' as new and separate letters of the alphabet , and sort them after `` z '' . Usually '' ä '' is sorted as equal to '' æ '' ( ash ) and '' ö '' is sorted as equal to '' ø '' ( o-slash ) .
The Scandinavian languages treat the characters with diacritics ä , ö and å as new and separate letters of the alphabet , and sort them after z. Usually ä is sorted as equal to æ ( ash ) and ö is sorted as equal to ø ( o-slash ) .