Trouble with \usepackage [german] {babel}

Question

All I wanted was to use an umlaut here and there in my paper, so I loaded the above package. I still did not get a decent umlaut. Since I saw that german was popping up in places where it shouldn't have (such as Beweis instead of Proof), I deleted the include line of the package in the .tex file. But now I have an even bigger problem:

Package babel Error: Unknown language `german'. Either you have (babel) misspelled its name, it has not been installed, (babel) or you requested it in a previous run. Fix its name, (babel) install it or just rerun the file, respectively.

Now I don´t even care about the umlauts, I just want everything to go back to normal. I do not understand what I am supposed to do. I certainly do not want to reload the package.

Answer 1

What do you mean with "I deleted the package"? Did you remove the \usepackage{babel} line, or did you remove the package files from your hard disk?

By the way, in order to get an umlaut without loading a package you can use e.g. \"u and \"a for ü and ä, respectively.

Maybe you have a left-over .aux file. If so, try to remove it and rerun LaTeX again.

Answer 2

This error occurs somethimes, if the used encoding of the editor and the used encoding in the LaTeX file are not the same.

With the following MWE

\documentclass[11pt,english,german]{article}  % ngerman
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}                   % latin9 utf8
\usepackage[german]{babel}                    % german, ngerman, english
\usepackage{blindtext}        % prints dummy text in different languages


\begin{document}

\Blinddocument               % create dummy document here

\end{document}

the editor TeXnicCenter shows the following screen:

In the right corner below you can see the encoding (UTF-8) the editor is using. If the encoding in the tex file (command \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}) is the same the error vanished (see log part in screenshot).

Just a remark: german uses the old german writing rules, if you want the newer one please use ngerman.

Hope this helps you for a better understanding of the encoding problem ...

Answer 3

This helped me on my Ubuntu OS:

sudo apt -y install texlive-lang-german

see: https://techoverflow.net/2019/05/31/how-to-fix-latex-error-package-babel-error-unknown-option-ngerman-on-ubuntu/

Answer 4

For me (using TexStudio) the solution was to add german in the \documentclass options and delete the command \usepackage[german]{babel}. In that way, all the terms (Chapter, Figure, and so on) are translated into German—no Babel needed.

It Works:

\documentclass[a5paper,german]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\begin{document}

It doesn't:

\documentclass[a5paper,german]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[german]{babel}

\begin{document}