Open O

"Ɔ" redirects here and is not to be confused with Ↄ, ാ, or כ.

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
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Sound values	[ɔ] [tsʼ]
In Unicode	U+0186, U+0254
Other
Writing direction	Left-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

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]}

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]
  • U+1D10 ᴐ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL OPEN O
  • U+1D12 ᴒ LATIN SMALL LETTER SIDEWAYS OPEN O
  • U+1D53 ᵓ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL OPEN O

Similar looking letters

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

• Open E
• Writing systems of Africa § Latin script
• Omicron