Open O

Letter of the Latin alphabet

Open o or turned c (majuscule: Ɔ, minuscule: ɔ) is a letter of the extended Latin alphabet. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, it represents the open-mid back rounded vowel. It is used in the orthographies of many African languages using the African reference alphabet.

The Yucatec Maya language used Ɔ to transcribe the alveolar ejective affricate [t͡sʼ] consonant in the orthography of the Colonial period. Now dz or tsʼ is preferred. ^[1]

Unicode

On the macOS US Extended keyboard, ɔ and Ɔ can be typed with ⌥ Option+: followed by c or C.^{[citation needed]}

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

• Ɔ with diacritics: ɔ́ ɔ̀ ɔ̃ ᶗ^[2]
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to Ɔ :^[3]
  • U+1D10 ᴐ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL OPEN O
  • U+1D12 ᴒ LATIN SMALL LETTER SIDEWAYS OPEN O
  • U+1D53 ᵓ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL OPEN O

Similar looking letters

The first of these Claudian letters is the antisigma.

Open o looks like a reversed letter 'C'. Claudius introduced a Ɔ (the antisigma) with the intention of replacing bs and ps.

Definition from Aasen (1873), Norsk ordbog med dansk forklaring, showing the Danish explanatory symbol “ɔ:”.

The Scandinavian explanatory symbol (forklaringstegnet) can be typeset using the open o followed by a colon, thus: ɔ:. It is used to mean "namely", "id est", "scilicet" or similar.^[4]

This letter is often used to refer to the Copyleft official sign, which looks like an open o with a circle around it.

See also

• Open E
• Writing systems of Africa § Latin script
• Omicron

References

1. Mathews, Peter. "Who's who in the Classic Maya world: Orthography used in the Who's Who". Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Retrieved June 19, 2024.
2. Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
3. Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
4. "Forklaringstegnet: en savnet del av det typografiske repertoar?". Typografi i Norge (in Norwegian). 2006-08-02 [last updated 2010-09-29]. Archived from the original on 2020-11-05.