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Latin_letter_O_with_stroke.png
Øø
"Ø", "ø" is a vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese and Norwegian alphabets.
Amongst the English vowels it sounds the most like the 'ir' in "bird" [1] (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/nordic-faq/part1_INTRODUCTION/section-7.html) or the 'ur' in "hurt" [2] (http://www.hadelandlag.org/1921/norseltrs.htm), as pronounced in a non-rhotic accent, like Received Pronunciation. The name of the letter is the same as the sound it makes.
The origin of the letter is a ligature for the diphthong "oe" (the horizontal line of the "e" being written across the "o") that has become a letter in itself. In modern Danish, Faroese and Norwegian, the letter is a unique vowel (IPA [ø]), and neither a diphthong, a ligature, nor a variant of the letter "O". As one Norwegian tour guide put it, "It's not an 'O' with a slash, it's an 'Ø'!"
In the Turkish, Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, and German, Estonian, and Hungarian alphabets, the letter "Ö" is the equivalent. Cyrillic alphabet has "Ө" as the equivalent letter, which are used in Kazakh, Mongolian, etc.
In Danish (and more conservative, Danish-influenced Norwegian) spelling, ø is a word all by itself meaning island.
The symbol "ø" is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to indicate the sound of the Danish and Norwegian letter, the close-mid front rounded vowel.
For computers, when using the ISO 8859-1 or Unicode sets, the codes for 'Ø' and 'ø' are respectively 216 and 248, or D8 and F8 in hexadecimal. On the Apple Macintosh operating system it can by typed by pressing the [Option] key then typing O or o. On Microsoft Windows it can by typed by holding down the [Alt] key while typing 0216 or 0248 on the numeric keypad, provided the system uses code page 1252 as system default. The Unicode letter name is "Latin capital/small letter O with stroke". In HTML character entity references, required in cases where the letter is not available by ordinary coding, the codes are Ø and ø. In the X Window System environment, one can produce these characters by depressing the Multi_key with a slash and then striking an o or O. In some systems, such as older versions of MS-DOS, the letter Ø is not part of the default codepage. In this case, unless additional codepages (such as the Scandinavian ones) are installed, a double-striked Y replaces Ø, while a ¢ sign replaces ø.
Not to be confused with
Ø is not to be confused with the number '0' (zero), which is sometimes written with a slash to differentiate it from the letter 'O' (this form is called the slashed zero). Once commonly used in this form by early computer models, recent computer technology has all but eliminated the need to use a slashed zero. But the symbol is still used in written Amateur radio callsign.
The symbol "∅" (U+2205) is used in mathematics to refer to the empty set, following Bourbaki. Modern typesetting software used by mathematicians typically renders it in stylised form. For example, common TeX packages offer \emptyset and \varnothing, which respectively appear as:
- <math>\emptyset, \varnothing<math>
"⌀" (U+2300) is used as the standard symbol for diameter, though the official symbol is slightly stylised (the stroke is often thinner at the bottom and thicker at the top, like the club or baton shape of the exclamation point; and extends further above the o portion). In German speaking countries it is also used as a symbol for average value: average in German is Durchschnitt, directly translated as cut-through.
See also
| Latin alphabet: | Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Qq | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz |
|---|---|
| Modified characters: |
Àà | Áá | Ââ | Ää | Åå | Āā | Ąą | Çç | Ĉĉ | Čč | Ćć | Đđ | Ęę | Ëë | Ĝĝ | Ğğ | Ĥĥ | Įį | Ïï | İı | Ĵĵ | Łł | Ññ | Õõ | Öö | Őő | Øø | Ǫǫ | Şş | Șș | Šš | Ŝŝ | Țț | Ŭŭ | Üü | Ųų | Ůů | Űű | Žž |
| Alphabet extensions: | Ææ | Ðð | DZdz | DŽdž | Əə | Ȝȝ | Ƕƕ | ĸ | LJlj | LLll | NJnj | Ŋŋ | Œœ | Ȣȣ | [[Half r|]] | ſ | ß | Þþ | Ƿƿ | IJij |