O (Cyrillic)

Cyrillic letter O
Ꙕ		Ю̂			Ꙗ
Я̈	Я̂	Я̨	Ԙ	Ѥ	Ѧ	Ꙙ	Ѫ
Ꙛ	Ѩ	Ꙝ	Ѭ	Ѯ	Ѱ	Ѳ	Ѵ
Ѷ	Ꙟ

• List of Cyrillic letters
• List of Cyrillic multigraphs

O (О о; italics: О о) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.

The letter most commonly represents the sound /ɔ/, like the o in "off". In Russian and Serbo-Croatian, it represents the sound /o/.

History

The Cyrillic letter О was derived from the Greek letter Omicron (Ο ο).

Form

Modern fonts

In modern-style typefaces, the Cyrillic letter O looks exactly like the Latin letter O ⟨O o⟩ and the Greek letter Omicron ⟨Ο ο⟩.

Church Slavonic printed fonts and Slavonic manuscripts

Historical typefaces (like poluustav (semi-uncial), a standard font style for the

• broad variant (Ѻ/ѻ), used mostly as a word initial letter (see
  Broad On
  for more details);
• narrow variant, being used now in Synodal Church Slavonic editions as the first element of digraph Oy/oy (see Uk (Cyrillic) for more details), and in the editions of Old Believers for unstressed "o" as well;
• variant with a cross inside (
  Crossed O
  ), Ꚛ, used in certain manuscripts as the initial letter of words окрестъ 'around, nearby' (the root of this Slavonic word, крест, means 'cross') and округъ 'district, neighbourhood' with their derivatives;
• "eyed" variant (
  Broad On
  signalling the word-initial position;
• "two-eyed" variants (
  double "O"
  without dots inside were used in certain manuscripts in spelling of dual/plural forms of the words with the same root 'eye';
• "many-eyed" variant (
  Multiocular O), ꙮ, used in certain manuscripts in spelling of the same root when embedded into word многоочитый 'many-eyed' (an attribute of seraphim
  ).

In Russian, O is used word-initially, after another vowel, and after non-palatalized consonants. Because of a vowel reduction processes, the Russian /o/ phoneme may have a number of pronunciations in unstressed syllables, including [ɐ] and [ə].

In Macedonian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, the letter represents the sound /ɔ/.

In

• Ο ο :
  Greek letter Omicron
• O o : Latin letter O
• 0 :
  Digit Zero
• Ё ё :
  Cyrillic letter Yo
• Ѻ ѻ :
  Cyrillic letter Broad On
• Ӧ ӧ :
  Cyrillic letter O with diaeresis
• Ө ө :
  Cyrillic letter Oe
• Ӫ ӫ :
  Cyrillic letter Oe with diaeresis
• Ҩ ҩ :
  Cyrillic letter O-hook

Computing codes

Exotic glyph variants of Cyrillic O are available only in Unicode:^{[4][5][6][7][8]}

• broad Ѻ/ѻ:
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ROUND OMEGA: U+047A
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ROUND OMEGA: U+047B
• narrow ᲂ does not just represent itself, but also used in digraph Oy/oy:
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER NARROW O: U+1C82
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UK: U+0478 (deprecated in favor of combination of Cyrillic letters О and у, U+041E U+0443)
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UK: U+0479 (deprecated in favor of combination of Cyrillic letters о and у, U+043E U+0443 or U+1C82 U+0443)
• with a cross inside (Ꚛ/ꚛ):
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CROSSED O: U+A69A
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CROSSED O: U+A69B
• doubled Ꚙ/ꚙ:
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DOUBLE O: U+A698
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DOUBLE O: U+A699
• eyed Ꙩ/ꙩ:
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER MONOCULAR O: U+A668
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER MONOCULAR O: U+A669
• two-eyed (Ꙫ/ꙫ, Ꙭ/ꙭ):
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BINOCULAR O: U+A66A
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BINOCULAR O: U+A66B
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DOUBLE MONOCULAR O: U+A66C
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DOUBLE MONOCULAR O: U+A66D
• many-eyed ꙮ:
  • CYRILLIC LETTER MULTIOCULAR O: U+A66E
• combining O for Church Slavonic abbreviations (as трⷪца = троица '(Holy) Trinity'):
  • COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER O: 2DEA

References