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.

Ɔ
Ɔ ɔ
Upper and lower case Open O
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic and Logographic
Sound values
In UnicodeU+0186, U+0254
History
Development
  • Ɔ ɔ
Other
Writing directionLeft-to-Right
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.

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

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Character information
Preview Ɔ ɔ
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OPEN O LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN O
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 390 U+0186 596 U+0254
UTF-8 198 134 C6 86 201 148 C9 94
Numeric character reference Ɔ Ɔ ɔ ɔ

On the macOS US Extended keyboard, ɔ and Ɔ can be typed with ⌥ Option+: followed by c or C.[citation needed]

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  • Ɔ with diacritics: ɔ́ ɔ̀ ɔ̃ [2]
  • Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to Ɔ:[3]
    • U+1D10 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL OPEN O
    • U+1D12 LATIN SMALL LETTER SIDEWAYS OPEN O
    • U+1D53 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL OPEN O

Similar looking letters

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The first of these Claudian letters is the antisigma.

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

 
Definition from Aasen (1873), Norsk ordbog med dansk forklaring, showing the Danish explanatory symbol “ɔ:”.

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

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References

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  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" (PDF).
  3. ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
  4. ^ "Forklaringstegnet: en savnet del av det typografiske repertoar?". Typografi i Norge (in Norwegian). 2006-08-02 [last updated 2010-09-29]. Archived from the original on 2020-11-05.