Open O

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+colon 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]

Similar looking letters

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

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"
3. ^ Everson, Michael et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS"
4. ^ "Forklaringstegnet: en savnet del av det typografiske repertoar?" (in Norwegian). Typografi i Norge. 2006-08-02. Archived 2020-11-05 at the Wayback Machine.