Ö
Encyclopedia
| Ö | ö |
"Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
s, or the letter O
O
O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a...
with umlaut
Umlaut (diacritic)
The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
to denote the front vowels ø or œ. In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified o.
O-Umlaut
The letter O with umlautUmlaut (diacritic)
The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
appears in the German
German alphabet
The modern German alphabet is an extended Latin alphabet consisting of 30 letters – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet plus four extra letters.In German, the individual letters have neuter gender: das A, das B etc....
, Swedish
Swedish alphabet
Modern Swedish is written with a 29-letter Latin alphabet:Prior to the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista in 2006, the letters and were collated together....
, and Icelandic alphabet
Icelandic alphabet
The modern Icelandic alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:It is a Latin alphabet with diacritics, in addition it includes the character eth Ðð and the runic letter thorn Þþ...
s. It represents the umlauted form of o, resulting in œ or ø. The letter is collated
Collation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...
together with O in the German alphabet, but located in the end of the Swedish and Icelandic ones. The letter also occurs in some languages that have adopted German names or spellings, but is not normally a part of these alphabets.
In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet or in limited character sets such as ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
, O-umlaut is frequently replaced with the digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
"oe".
Letter Ö in other languages
The letter Ö occurs, apart from Germanic languagesGermanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
, in the Uralic languages
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
Finnish
Finnish alphabet
The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin script, and especially the Swedish alphabet. Officially it comprises 28 letters:A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö...
, Karelian
Karelian language
Karelian language is a Finnic language spoken mainly in the Russian Republic of Karelia. Linguistically Karelian is closely related to the Finnish dialects spoken in eastern Finland and some Finnish linguists even classified Karelian as a dialect of Finnish...
, Estonian
Estonian alphabet
The Estonian alphabet is used for writing the Estonian language and is based on the Latin alphabet, with German influence. As such, the Estonian alphabet has the letters Ä, Ö, and Ü , which represent the vowel sounds , and , respectively...
, Southern Sami, and Hungarian
Hungarian alphabet
The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional...
, in the Turkic languages
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
such as Azeri, Turkish
Turkish alphabet
The Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
, Turkmen
Turkmen alphabet
The current official Turkmen alphabet as used in Turkmenistan is a Latin alphabet based on the Turkish alphabet, but with notable differences: J is used instead of the Turkish C; Ž is used instead of the Turkish J; Y is used instead of the dotless i ; Ý is used instead of the Turkish consonantal Y;...
, Uyghur
Uyghur language
Uyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other...
(Latin script
Uyghur Latin Yéziqi
Uyghur Latin script is an auxiliary alphabet for the Uyghur language based on the Latin script. Uyghur is primarily written in a Arabic alphabet and sometimes in a Cyrillic alphabet.- Construction :...
), Crimean Tatar
Crimean Tatar language
The Crimean Tatar language is the language of the Crimean Tatars. It is a Turkic language spoken in Crimea, Central Asia , and the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria...
, and in the Uto-Aztecan language
Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...
Hopi
Hopi language
Hopi is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people of northeastern Arizona, USA, although today some Hopi are monolingual English speakers.The use of the language has gradually declined over the course of the 20th century...
, where it represents the vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
sounds [ø, œ]. Its name in Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
, Estonian
Estonian language
Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
, Azeri, Turkish
Turkish alphabet
The Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
, Turkmen
Turkmen alphabet
The current official Turkmen alphabet as used in Turkmenistan is a Latin alphabet based on the Turkish alphabet, but with notable differences: J is used instead of the Turkish C; Ž is used instead of the Turkish J; Y is used instead of the dotless i ; Ý is used instead of the Turkish consonantal Y;...
, Uyghur
Uyghur Latin Yéziqi
Uyghur Latin script is an auxiliary alphabet for the Uyghur language based on the Latin script. Uyghur is primarily written in a Arabic alphabet and sometimes in a Cyrillic alphabet.- Construction :...
, Crimean Tatar
Crimean Tatar language
The Crimean Tatar language is the language of the Crimean Tatars. It is a Turkic language spoken in Crimea, Central Asia , and the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, and Votic
Votic language
Votic or Votian is the language spoken by the Votes of Ingria. It is closely related to Estonian and belongs to the Finnic subgroup of Uralic languages. Votic is spoken only in Krakolye and Luzhitsy, two villages in the Kingisepp district, and is close to extinction...
is Öö [øː], not "O with two dots", since /ø/ is not a variant of the vowel /o/, but a distinct phoneme.
Note that unlike the O-umlaut, the letter Ö cannot be written as "oe". Minimal pair
Minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have distinct meanings...
s exist between 'ö' and 'oe' (and also with 'oo', 'öö' and 'öe'). Consider Finnish eläinkö "animal?" (interrogative) vs. eläinkoe "animal test", or Finnish töissä "at work", toissa "before last" (cf. Germanic umlaut
Germanic umlaut
In linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. The term umlaut was originally coined and is used principally in connection with the study of the Germanic languages...
). In the case the character Ö is unavailable, O is substituted and context is relied upon for inference of the intended meaning.
It is collated
Collation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...
as an independent letter, sometimes by placing it at the end of the alphabet. It is the last letter in the Finnish alphabet, after Z
Z
Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal...
, Å
Å
Å represents various sounds in several languages. Å is part of the alphabets used for the Alemannic and the Bavarian-Austrian dialects of German...
and Ä
Ä
"Ä" and "ä" are both characters that represent either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter A with an umlaut mark or diaeresis.- Independent letter :...
, thus fulfilling the place of "omega
Omega
Omega is the 24th and last letter of the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system, it has a value of 800. The word literally means "great O" , as opposed to omicron, which means "little O"...
", for example in the Finnish expression aasta ööhön "from A to Z". In Hungarian, in Turkish
Turkish alphabet
The Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
and other Turkic alphabets that have Ö, it is an independent letter between O and P.
In Seneca
Seneca language
Seneca is the language of the Seneca people, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League. About 10,000 Seneca live in the United States and Canada, primarily on reservations in western New York, with others living in Oklahoma and near Brantford, Ontario.-Phonology:Seneca words are written with...
"ö" is used to represent [ɔ̃], a back mid rounded nasalized vowel.
O-diaeresis
O with diaeresis occurs in several languages which use diaereses. In these languages the letter represents a normal O, and the pronunciation does not change (e.g. in the Dutch/Afrikaans word coöperatief [cooperative]). Some writers and publications, such as the American magazine The New YorkerThe New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
use it in English words such as zoölogy and coöperate, and it is also commonly employed in the name of the constellation
Constellation
In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....
Boötes
Boötes
Boötes is a constellation in the northern sky, located between 0° and +60° declination, and 13 and 16 hours of right ascension on the celestial sphere. The name comes from the Greek Βοώτης, Boōtēs, meaning herdsman or plowman...
.
Usage in phonetic alphabets
In the Rheinische DokumentaRheinische Dokumenta
The Rheinische Dokumenta is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland....
, a phonetic alphabet for many West Central German
West Central German
West Central German belongs to the Central, High German dialect family in the German language. Its dialects are thoroughly Franconian including the following sub-families:* Central Franconian...
, the Low Rhenish, and few related vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
languages, "ö" represents the close-mid front rounded vowel
Close-mid front rounded vowel
The close-mid front rounded vowel, or high-mid front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter o with a diagonal stroke through it, derived from the Danish, Norwegian...
with the IPA notation [ø].
The Uralic phonetic alphabet
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages...
uses <Ö> as in Finnish to denote the front vowel [ø].
Codes for computing
In UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, the capital Ö is codepoint U+00D6 and the lower case ö is U+00F6.
The numeric character reference
Numeric character reference
A numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-related markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set of Unicode...
s in HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
and XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
are "Ö" and "ö" for upper and lower case respectively. The Entity Name s are "ö" and "Ö"
Typography
Handwriting
Handwriting is a person's particular & individual style of writing with pen or pencil, which contrasts with "Hand" which is an impersonal and formalised writing style in several historical varieties...
s. In most later handwritings these bars in turn nearly became dots. The origin of the letter Ö was a similar ligature
Ligature (typography)
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms", where the specific shape of a letter depends on...
for the digraph OE: e was written above o and degenerated into two small dots.
In some inscriptions and display typefaces, Ö may be represented as an O with a small letter E inside.
In modern typography
Modern typography
Modern Typography was a reaction against the perceived decadence of typography and design of the late 19th century. It is mostly associated with the works of Jan Tschichold and Bauhaus typographers Herbert Bayer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky and others....
there was insufficient space on typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s and later computer keyboard
Computer keyboard
In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
s to allow for both an O-with-dots (also representing Ö) and an O-with-bars. Since they looked near-identical the two glyphs were combined, which was also done in computer character encoding
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
s such as ISO 8859-1. As a result there was no way to differentiate between the different characters. While Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
theoretically provides a solution, this is almost never used.
The HTML entity for Ö is Ö. For ö, it is ö (Mnemonic
Mnemonic
A mnemonic , or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids memory. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systems are used to make memorization easier. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often verbal, such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something,...
for "O umlaut").
The Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
code point for ö is U+00F6. Ö is U+00D6.
In TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
, Ö and ö are produced using \"{O} and \"{o} respectively.
The numerical XML entity for Ö is Ö or Ö. For ö, it is ö or ö.
Hungarian alphabet
Hungarian alphabet
The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional...
contains both ö and ő: double acute o is the longer pair of ö. See double acute accent
Double acute accent
The double acute accent is a diacritic mark of the Latin script. It is used primarily in written Hungarian, and consequently is sometimes referred to as Hungarumlaut, a portmanteau of Hungarian umlaut...
.