O (Cyrillic)

Nowadays, O (Cyrillic) has become a topic of great relevance and interest in different areas. Its impact is not limited to a single sector, but covers a wide range of areas, from technology to health, culture and politics. The O (Cyrillic) phenomenon has captured the attention of millions of people around the world, generating debates, reflections and actions around its meaning, implications and potential consequences. In this article, we will explore various perspectives on O (Cyrillic), analyzing its evolution, its relevance in the current context and its possible impact in the future.

Not to be confused with the Latin letter O, Arabic numeral 0 or the Greek letter Οmicron.
O
О о
Usage
Writing systemCyrillic
TypeAlphabetic
Sound values, , , ,
History
Development
Ο ο
  • О о
Other
Associated numbers70 (Cyrillic numerals)
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between , / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
"O", from Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva's 1911 alphabet book

O (О о; italics: О о) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.

The letter most commonly represents the sound /ɔ/, like the o in "off". In Russian and Serbo-Croatian, it represents the sound /o/.

History

Some old Russian typewriters like this one were manufactured without the digit 0 as the letter O could be used instead.

The Cyrillic letter О was derived from the Greek letter Omicron (Ο ο).

Form

Modern fonts

In modern-style typefaces, the Cyrillic letter O looks exactly like the Latin letter O ⟨O o⟩ and the Greek letter Omicron ⟨Ο ο⟩.

Church Slavonic printed fonts and Slavonic manuscripts

Historical typefaces (like poluustav (semi-uncial), a standard font style for the Church Slavonic typography) and old manuscripts represent several additional glyph variants of Cyrillic O, both for decorative and orthographic (sometimes also "hieroglyphic"[1]) purposes, namely:

  • broad variant (Ѻ/ѻ), used mostly as a word initial letter (see Broad On 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) for more details), and in the editions of Old Believers 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) 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 signalling the word-initial position;
  • "two-eyed" variants (Binocular O) 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), ꙮ, used in certain manuscripts in spelling of the same root when embedded into word многоочитый 'many-eyed' (an attribute of seraphim).

Usage

In Russian, O is used word-initially, after another vowel, and after non-palatalized consonants. Because of a vowel reduction processes, the Russian /o/ phoneme may have a number of pronunciations in unstressed syllables, including and .

In Macedonian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, the letter represents the sound /ɔ/.

In Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.[2][3] It's the most common letter in the Russian language.[4]

See also: Cyrillic o variants

Computing codes

Character information
Preview О о
Unicode name CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER O CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER O
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 1054 U+041E 1086 U+043E
UTF-8 208 158 D0 9E 208 190 D0 BE
Numeric character reference О О о о
Named character reference О о
KOI8-R and KOI8-U 239 EF 207 CF
Code page 855 215 D7 214 D6
Windows-1251 206 CE 238 EE
ISO-8859-5 190 BE 222 DE
Macintosh Cyrillic 142 8E 238 EE

Exotic glyph variants of Cyrillic O are available only in Unicode:[5][6][7][8][9]

  • 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 трⷪца = троица '(Holy) Trinity'):
    • COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER O: 2DEA

References

  1. ^ Карский, Ефим (1979). Славянская кирилловская палеография. Moscow.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  2. ^ "Tuvan language, alphabet and pronunciation". omniglot.com. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
  3. ^ Campbell, George L.; King, Gareth (24 July 2013). Compendium of the World's Languages. Routledge. ISBN 9781136258459. Retrieved 14 June 2016 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ "Новый частотный словарь русской лексики". Ruslang.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 10 July 2024.
  5. ^ "Cyrillic: Range: 0400–04FF" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 9.0. 2016. p. 4. Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  6. ^ "Cyrillic Extended-A: Range: 2DE0–2DFF" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 9.0. 2016. p. 3. Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  7. ^ "Cyrillic Extended-B: Range: A640–A69F" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 9.0. 2016. p. 3. Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  8. ^ "Cyrillic Extended-C: Range: 1C80–1C8F" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 9.0. 2016. p. 3. Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  9. ^ "Church Slavonic Typography in Unicode" (PDF). Aleksandr Andreev, Yuri Shardt, Nikita Simmons. 2015. p. 13. Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  • The dictionary definition of О at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of о at Wiktionary