Cyrillic letters O
Phonetic usage:	[o]
Numeric value:	70
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Non-Slavic letters
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Archaic letters
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
List of Cyrillic letters Cyrillic digraphs
v t e

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

O commonly represents the close-mid back rounded vowel /o/, like the pronunciation of ⟨o⟩ in Scottish English "go".

History

The Cyrillic letter O was derived from the Greek letter Omicron (? ?).

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 ⟨? ?⟩.

Church Slavonic printed fonts and Slavonic manuscripts

Historical typefaces (like poluustav (semi-uncial), a standard font style for the Church Slavonic typography) and old manuscripts represent several additional glyph variants of Cyrillic O, both for decorative and orthographic (sometimes also "hieroglyphic"^[1]) purposes, namely:

• broad variant (?/?), 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), ?, used in certain manuscripts as the initial letter of words ? 'around, nearby' (the root of this Slavonic word, , means 'cross') and 'district, neighbourhood' with their derivatives;
• "eyed" variant (Monocular O) with a dot inside (?/?), used in certain manuscripts in spelling of word 'eye' and its derivatives. In many other texts, including the birchbark letters, the monocular O was not used as a hieroglyph but largely as a synonym of Broad On signalling the word-initial position;
• "two-eyed" variants (Binocular O) with two dots inside (?/? or ?/?), also 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), ?, used in certain manuscripts in spelling of the same root when embedded into word 'many-eyed' (an attribute of seraphs).

Usage

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 [?] and [?].

In Macedonian the letter represents the sound /?/.

In Tuvan the Cyrillic letter can be written as a double vowel.^[2][3]

Related letters and other similar characters

• ? ? : Greek letter Omicron
• O o : Latin letter O
• ? ? : Cyrillic letter Yo
• ? ? : Cyrillic letter Broad On
• ? ? : Cyrillic letter O with diaeresis
• ? ? : Cyrillic letter Oe
• ? ? : Cyrillic letter Oe with diaeresis
• ? ? : Cyrillic letter O-hook

Computing codes

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

• broad ?/?:
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ROUND OMEGA: U+047A
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ROUND OMEGA: U+047B
• narrow ? 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 ? and ?, U+041E U+0443)
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UK: U+0479 (deprecated in favor of combination of Cyrillic letters ? and ?, U+043E U+0443 or U+1C82 U+0443)
• with a cross inside (?/?):
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CROSSED O: U+A69A
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CROSSED O: U+A69B
• doubled ?/?:
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DOUBLE O: U+A698
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DOUBLE O: U+A699
• eyed ?/?:
  • CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER MONOCULAR O: U+A668
  • CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER MONOCULAR O: U+A669
• two-eyed (?/?, ?/?):
  • 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 ?:
  • CYRILLIC LETTER MULTIOCULAR O: U+A66E
• combining O for Church Slavonic abbreviations (as = '(Holy) Trinity'):
  • COMBINING CYRILLIC LETTER O: 2DEA

References

External links

• The dictionary definition of ? at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of ? at Wiktionary