O or o is the fifteenth letter of the basic Latin ISO alphabet and the fourth vowel letter of the modern English alphabet. Its English name is o (pronounced / ˈoʊ /), plural oes.

Its graphic form remains fairly constant from the Phoenician era to the present day. The name of the Phoenician letter was ʿeyn, which means “eye,” and in fact, its form has its origin simply as a drawing of a human eye (probably inspired by the corresponding Egyptian hieroglyph, cf. Proto-Sinaitic script). Its initial value of sound is that of a consonant, and probably the sound is represented by the related Arabic letter ع ʿayn.

The use of this Phoenician letter for vocal sound is due to the early Greek alphabets, which adopted the letter O “omicron” to represent the vowel / o /. The letter was accepted with this value in the Old Italic alphabets, including the early Latin alphabet. The Greek version of the form later came to distinguish this long sound (Omega, which means “A big O) from a short o (Omicron, which means “a small o”). The Greek omicron gave rise to the corresponding Cyrillic letter O and the early Italic letter to runic ᛟ.

Even non-Semitic alphabets tend to have similar shapes to represent this sound; for example, the creators Afaka and Ol Chiki, each invented in different parts of the world in the last century, attribute their “O” vowels to the shape of the mouth when they make this sound.

English

The letter ⟨o⟩ is the fourth most common letter in the English alphabet. Like other English vowels, it combines “long” and “short” pronunciations.The”long,” as in a boat, is actually most often a diphthong / oʊ / (realized dialectically everywhere from). In English, there is also a “short” ⟨o⟩ like a fox, / ɒ /, which sounds a little different in different dialects. In most dialects of British English, it is either a rounded vowel with a half-open back or a rounded vowel with an open back; In American English, it is most often an unrounded back to a central vowel.

Common digraphs include ⟨oo⟨, which represents either / uː / or / ʊ /; ⟨Oi⟩ or ⟨oy⟩, which usually represent the diphthong / ɔɪ / and ⟨ao⟩, ⟨oe⟩ and ⟨ou⟩, which represent different pronunciations depending on the context and etymology.

In other contexts, especially before a letter with a minimum, ⟨o⟩ may represent the sound / ʌ /, as in ‘son’ or “love.” It can also be a semi-vowel / w / like in choir or quinoa.

In English, the letter ⟨o⟩ isolation before a noun, usually in capital letters, marks vocative case, as in the titles O Canada or O Captain! My Captain! or a few verses from the Bible.

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