json - Non-english characters in python dictionary not printed correctly -

ok, first,yes have read http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/unicode.html

still have problems understanding why:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- import json a='ööö' b='ääß'  print a+' '+b >>>ööö ääß  print {'a':a,'b':b} >>>{'a': '\xc3\xb6\xc3\xb6\xc3\xb6', 'b': '\xc3\xa4\xc3\xa4\xc3\x9f'} 

can assist in how have output

print {'a':a,'b':b}     >>>{'a': 'ööö', 'b': 'ääß'} 

i tried every combination of unicode(a), a.encode('utf-8'), unicode(a).encode('utf-8') , likes, no avail.

feeling stupid.

would appreciate if explain foor noobs, full examples.l

thanks lot!

>>> d = {'a': unicode('ööö', 'utf-8'), 'b': unicode('ääß', 'utf-8')} >>> print repr(d).decode("unicode-escape") {'a': u'ööö', 'b': u'ääß'}