Ö

Ö, or ö, is a character that represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter "o" modified with an umlaut or diaeresis. Ö, or ö, is a variant of the letter O. In many languages, the letter "ö", or the "o" modified with an umlaut, is used to denote the close- or open-mid front rounded vowels Template:IPAblink or Template:IPAblink. In languages without such vowels, the character is known as an "o with diaeresis" and denotes a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified Template:IPAblink.

O-umlaut

File:Boundary stone on the Demeljoch - 1.jpg

The letter Ö, standing for Österreich, i.e. Austria, on a boundary stone at the German-Austrian border

The letter o with umlaut (ö) appears in the German alphabet. It represents the umlauted form of o, resulting in Template:IPAblink or Template:IPAblink. The letter is often collated together with o in the German alphabet, but there are exceptions which collate it like oe or OE. The letter also occurs in some languages that have adopted German names or spellings, but it is not normally a part of those alphabets. In Danish and Norwegian, ö was previously used in place of ø in older texts to distinguish between open and closed ö-sounds. It is also used when confusion with other symbols could occur, on maps for instance. The Danish/Norwegian ø is, like the German/Swedish ö, a development of oe and can be compared with the French œ. In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet or in limited character sets such as ASCII, o-umlaut is frequently replaced with the digraph oe. For example, German (hear/listen) can be easily recognized even if spelled .

Ö in other languages

The letter ö also occurs in two other Germanic languages: Swedish and Icelandic, but it is regarded there as a separate letter, not as an orthographic variation of the letter o. Apart from Germanic languages, it occurs in the Uralic languages such as Finnish, Karelian, Veps, Estonian, Southern Sami, and Hungarian, in the Turkic languages such as Azeri, Turkish, Turkmen, Uyghur (Latin script), Crimean Tatar, Kazakh, and in the Uto-Aztecan language Hopi, where it represents the vowel sounds . Its name in Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, Estonian, Azeri, Turkish, Turkmen, Uyghur, Crimean Tatar, Hungarian, Votic and Volapük is Öö , not "O with two dots" since is not a variant of the vowel but a distinct phoneme.

In mountain dialects of Emilian, it is used to represent , e.g. tött "all".

In the Dutch language, Template:Angbr appears only as O-diaeresis - see below. The sound is spelled with the digraph Template:Angbr, as in 'door'. In the Dutch-based orthographies of Low Saxon, Limburgish and Ripuarian, Template:Angbr is used only for the short (as in Maastrichtian 'bus'), whereas the long (lowered to in Maastricht) and are typically written unambiguously with Template:Angbr (since it is often an umlauted form of Template:Angbr, in IPA) and Template:Angbr, the latter following the Standard Dutch spelling. The example words (in Maastrichtian) are 'a lot' and 'beech'. The short close-mid (which instead can be transcribed in IPA with Template:Angbr IPA) tends to be spelled with Template:Angbr (as in Maastrichtian 'voice'), but this can also be used for in open syllables, again following the Standard Dutch spelling. On the German side of the border, Template:Angbr can be used for any of the (thus ), whereas is always written distinctly, as Template:Angbr. Template:Angbr is never used for any of the aforementioned front vowels; instead, it denotes the close back rounded vowel , as in Standard German. The length is usually disambiguated by doubling the following consonant (which denotes the short ), not doubling it or adding a silent Template:Angbr after Template:Angbr (both denoting the long ). The exact height normally remains ambiguous, but the open-mid can be disambiguated by adding a grave accent above Template:Angbr, as in Template:Angbr (thus ), similarly to some Swiss German orthographies. This is not the usual practice, not least because the diacritics end up stacked on top of one another.

In certain languages, the letter ö cannot be written as "oe" because minimal pairs exist between ö and oe (and also with oo, öö and öe), as in Finnish eläinkö "animal?" (interrogative) vs. eläinkoe "animal test" (cf. Germanic umlaut). If the character ö is unavailable, o is substituted and context is relied upon for inference of the intended meaning. In Volapük, ö can be written as oy, but never as oe. In the aforementioned Dutch-based orthographies of Low Saxon, Limburgish and Ripuarian, Template:Angbr also cannot be written with Template:Angbr because the latter denotes the close back , as in Standard Dutch. Thus, Maastrichtian 'bus' cannot be spelled * because it is not pronounced * (cf. 'mouse'). The German-based orthographies, in which is always spelled Template:Angbr, have no such limitation. In those, Template:Angbr is read as identical with Template:Angbr, same as in Standard German.

In Romagnol, ö is used to represent , e.g. cöt "cooked".

In the Seneca language, ö is used to represent , a back mid rounded nasalized vowel.

In Swedish, the letter ö is also used as the one-letter word for an island, which is not to be mixed with the actual letter. Ö in this sense is also a Swedish-language surname.

In the Seri language, ö indicates the labialization of the previous consonant, e.g. cöihiin "sanderling".

Alphabetical position

In some alphabets it is collated as an independent letter, sometimes by placing it at or near the end of the alphabet, such as after Z, Å and Ä in Swedish and Finnish, after Ý, (Z), Þ and Æ in Icelandic, and after V, (W), Õ and Ä in Estonian (thus fulfilling the place of omega, for example in the Finnish expression aasta ööhön "from A to Z", literally "from A to Ö". However, in Hungarian, and in the Turkish alphabet and other Turkic alphabets that have ö, it is an independent letter between o and p.

O-diaeresis

O with diaeresis occurs in several languages that use diaereses. In these languages the letter represents the fact that this o is the start of a new syllable (e.g. in the Dutch/Afrikaans word [cooperative]), instead of the general oo (e.g. In the Dutch word [thorn]) .

In English

Some writers and publications, such as The New Yorker, use it in English words such as zoölogy and coöperate to indicate that the second vowel is pronounced separately. It is also employed in names such as Laocoön, Coös County, and the constellation Boötes. This is also done in Dutch.

Usage in phonetic alphabets

The letter Ö, or ö.

The letter Ö

In the Rheinische Dokumenta, a phonetic alphabet for many West Central German, the Low Rhenish, and few related vernacular languages, ö represents the close-mid front rounded vowel with the IPA notation . The open-mid front rounded vowel is transcribed as Template:Angbr with an below, thus Template:Angbr.

The Uralic phonetic alphabet uses Template:Angle bracket as in Finnish to denote the front vowel .

Typography

File:VolapukAOU.svg

Johann Martin Schleyer proposed alternate forms for Ö and ö (Ꞝ and ꞝ, respectively) in Volapük but they were rarely used.

File:O containing E ligature.jpg

Unusual form of the Œ or Ö ligature, with a small E inside the O. From an inscription in the crypt of Cologne (Köln) Cathedral.

HistoricallyTemplate:When O-diaeresis was written as an o with two dots above the letter. O-umlaut was written as an o with a small e written above in cursive old German (Gothic) script (Oͤ oͤ): this minute e is represented by two vertical bars connected by a slanted line, which then degenerated to two vertical bars in early modern handwritings. In most later handwritings these bars in turn nearly became dots. The origin of the letter ö was a similar ligature 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 there was insufficient space on typewriters and later computer keyboards to allow for both an O-with-dots (also representing ö) and an o-with-barsTemplate:Clarify. Since they looked nearly identical, the two glyphs were combined, which was also done in computer character encodings such as ISO 8859-1. As a result, there was no way to differentiate between the different characters.

Other alphabets containing o-diaeresis include the Welsh alphabet.

Other alphabets containing o-umlaut include: the Turkmen alphabet (for the vowel [ø]), the Azerbaijani alphabet (for the vowel [œ]), the Yapese alphabet (for [œ]), the Luxembourgish alphabet (when writing loanwords from Standard German), the Slovenian alphabet (when writing loanwords from German, Hungarian and Turkish), and the Dinka alphabet. The Hungarian alphabet contains both ö and ő: double acute o is the longer pair of ö. See double acute accent.

See also

• Diaeresis (diacritic)
• O with diaeresis (Cyrillic)
• Ø, the character used in some Nordic languages for similar sounds
• Metal umlaut

External links

• The IstroRomanians in Croatia: Alphabet
• Introduction to Swedish by Urban Sikeborg, Stockholm (1997-98) Template:Webarchive