O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English (pronounced /ˈoʊ/) is spelled o; the plural is oes, though usage of this is rare.
The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin (eye), which represented a consonant, probably the voiced pharyngeal fricative (IPA: [ʕ]), the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a similar Egyptian ...
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O is the fifteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English (pronounced /ˈoʊ/) is spelled o; the plural is oes, though usage of this is rare.
The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin (eye), which represented a consonant, probably the voiced pharyngeal fricative (IPA: [ʕ]), the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a similar Egyptian hieroglyph for "eye".
The Greeks are thought to have come up with the innovation of vowel characters, and lacking a pharyngeal consonant, employed this letter as the Greek O to represent the vowel /o/, a sound it maintained in Etruscan and Latin. In Greek, a variation of the form later came to distinguish this long sound (Omega, meaning "large O") from the short o (Omicron, meaning "small o").
Its graphic form has also remained fairly constant from Phoenician times until today. Indeed, even alphabets constructed "from scratch", i.e. not...
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