O (О о; italics:
''О о'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...
.
The letter most commonly represents the sound /ɔ/, like the o in "off". In
Russian
Russian(s) may refer to:
*Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*A citizen of Russia
*Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages
*''The Russians'', a b ...
and
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
, it represents the sound /o/.
History
The Cyrillic letter О was derived from the
Greek letter
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
Omicron
Omicron (, ; uppercase Ο, lowercase ο, ) is the fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. This letter is derived from the Phoenician letter ayin: . In classical Greek, omicron represented the close-mid back rounded vowel in contrast to '' o ...
(Ο ο).
Form
Modern fonts
In modern-style typefaces, the Cyrillic letter O
looks exactly like the
Latin letter O and the
Greek letter Omicron .
Church Slavonic printed fonts and Slavonic manuscripts
Historical typefaces (like ''poluustav'' (semi-uncial), a standard font style for the
Church Slavonic
Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...
typography) and old manuscripts represent several additional glyph variants of Cyrillic O, both for decorative and orthographic (sometimes also "hieroglyphic") purposes, namely:
* broad variant (Ѻ/ѻ), used mostly as a word initial letter (see
Broad On
This is a list of rare glyph variants of the Cyrillic letter . They were proposed for inclusion into Unicode in 2007 and incorporated as in Unicode 5.1.
Monocular O
Monocular O () is one of the rare glyph variants of Cyrillic letter . This glyp ...
for more details);
* narrow variant, ᲂ, being used now in Synodal Church Slavonic editions as the first element of digraph Oy/oy (see
Uk (Cyrillic)
Uk (Ѹ ѹ; italics: ''Ѹ ѹ'') is a digraph of the early Cyrillic alphabet of the letters О and У, although commonly considered and used as a single letter. To save space, it was often written as a vertical ligature (Ꙋ ꙋ ...
for more details), and in the editions of
Old Believers
Old Believers or Old Ritualists ( Russian: староверы, ''starovery'' or старообрядцы, ''staroobryadtsy'') is the common term for several religious groups, which maintain the old liturgical and ritual practices of the Russian ...
for unstressed "o" as well;
* variant with a cross inside (
Crossed O), Ꚛ, used in certain manuscripts as the initial letter of words ''окрестъ'' 'around, nearby' (the root of this Slavonic word, ''крест'', means 'cross') and ''округъ'' 'district, neighbourhood' with their derivatives;
* "eyed" variant (
Monocular O
This is a list of rare glyph variants of the Cyrillic letter . They were proposed for inclusion into Unicode in 2007 and incorporated as in Unicode 5.1.
Monocular O
Monocular O () is one of the rare glyph variants of Cyrillic letter . This glyp ...
) with a dot inside (Ꙩ/ꙩ), used in certain manuscripts in spelling of word ''око'' 'eye' and its derivatives. In many other texts, including the
birchbark letters, the monocular O was not used as a hieroglyph but largely as a synonym of
Broad On
This is a list of rare glyph variants of the Cyrillic letter . They were proposed for inclusion into Unicode in 2007 and incorporated as in Unicode 5.1.
Monocular O
Monocular O () is one of the rare glyph variants of Cyrillic letter . This glyp ...
signalling the word-initial position;
* "two-eyed" variants (
Binocular O
This is a list of rare glyph variants of the Cyrillic letter . They were proposed for inclusion into Unicode in 2007 and incorporated as in Unicode 5.1.
Monocular O
Monocular O () is one of the rare glyph variants of Cyrillic letter . This glyp ...
) with two dots inside (Ꙫ/ꙫ or Ꙭ/ꙭ), also
double "O" without dots inside were used in certain manuscripts in spelling of dual/plural forms of the words with the same root 'eye';
* "many-eyed" variant (
Multiocular O
This is a list of rare glyph variants of the Cyrillic letter . They were proposed for inclusion into Unicode in 2007 and incorporated as in Unicode 5.1.
Monocular O
Monocular O () is one of the rare glyph variants of Cyrillic letter . This glyp ...
), ꙮ, used in certain manuscripts in spelling of the same root when embedded into word 'many-eyed' (an attribute of
seraph
A seraph ( ; pl.: ) is a celestial or heavenly being originating in Ancient Judaism. The term plays a role in subsequent Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
Tradition places seraphim in the highest rank in Christian angelology and in the fif ...
im).
Usage
In
Russian
Russian(s) may refer to:
*Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*A citizen of Russia
*Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages
*''The Russians'', a b ...
, O is used word-initially, after another vowel, and after non-
palatalized consonants. Because of a
vowel reduction processes, the Russian phoneme may have a number of pronunciations in unstressed syllables, including and . It is the most common letter in the Russian language.
In
Macedonian
Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia.
Macedonian(s) may refer to:
People Modern
* Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North Macedonia
* Mac ...
,
Bulgarian,
Ukrainian and
Belarusian
Belarusian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to Belarus
* Belarusians, people from Belarus, or of Belarusian descent
* A citizen of Belarus, see Demographics of Belarus
* Belarusian language
* Belarusian culture
* Belarusian cuisine
* Byelor ...
, the letter represents the sound /ɔ/.
In
Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a
double vowel Double letter may refer to:
*Digraph (orthography)#Homogeneous digraph - a type of digraph
* Gemination#Double letters that are not long consonants
{{disambiguation ...
.
Related letters and other similar characters
*Ο ο :
Greek letter Omicron
*O o :
Latin letter O
*Ó ó :
Latin letter Ó
*0 :
Digit Zero
*Ё ё :
Cyrillic letter Yo
*Ѻ ѻ :
Cyrillic letter Broad On
*Ӧ ӧ :
Cyrillic letter O with diaeresis
*Ө ө :
Cyrillic letter Oe
*Ӫ ӫ :
Cyrillic letter Oe with diaeresis
*Ҩ ҩ :
Cyrillic letter O-hook
Computing codes
Exotic glyph variants of Cyrillic O are available only in
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
:
[
* broad Ѻ/ѻ:
** CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ROUND OMEGA: U+047A
** CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ROUND OMEGA: U+047B
* narrow ᲂ does not just represent itself, but also used in digraph Oy/oy:
** CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER NARROW O: U+1C82
** CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UK: U+0478 (deprecated in favor of combination of Cyrillic letters О and у, U+041E U+0443)
** CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UK: U+0479 (deprecated in favor of combination of Cyrillic letters о and у, U+043E U+0443 or U+1C82 U+0443)
* with a cross inside (Ꚛ/ꚛ):
** CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CROSSED O: U+A69A
** CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CROSSED O: U+A69B
* doubled Ꚙ/ꚙ:
** CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DOUBLE O: U+A698
** CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DOUBLE O: U+A699
* eyed Ꙩ/ꙩ:
** CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER MONOCULAR O: U+A668
** CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER MONOCULAR O: U+A669
* two-eyed (Ꙫ/ꙫ, Ꙭ/ꙭ):
** CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BINOCULAR O: U+A66A
** CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BINOCULAR O: U+A66B
** CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DOUBLE MONOCULAR O: U+A66C
** CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DOUBLE MONOCULAR O: U+A66D
* many-eyed ꙮ:
** CYRILLIC LETTER MULTIOCULAR O: U+A66E
* combining O for Church Slavonic abbreviations (as = '(Holy) Trinity'):
** COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER O: 2DEA
]
References
External links
*
*
{{Cyrillic navbox
Cyrillic letters
Vowel letters