“O”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

O (named o {{IPAc-en|oʊ}}, plural oes)^[1] is the 15th letter and the fourth vowel in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet.

History

Its graphic form has remained fairly constant from Phoenician times until today. The name of the Phoenician letter was

ʿeyn, meaning "eye", and indeed its shape originates simply as a drawing of a human eye (possibly inspired by the corresponding Egyptian hieroglyph, cf. Proto-Sinaitic script).

Its original sound value was that of a consonant, probably {{IPAblink|ʕ}}, the sound represented by the cognate Arabic letter ع ʿayn.

The use of this Phoenician letter for a vowel sound is due to the early Greek alphabets, which adopted the letter as O "omicron" to represent the vowel {{IPA|/o/}}.

The letter was adopted with this value in the Old Italic alphabets, including the early Latin alphabet.

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").

Greek omicron gave rise to the corresponding Cyrillic letter O and the early Italic letter to runic ᛟ.

Even alphabets that are not derived from Semitic tend to have similar forms to represent this sound; for example, the creators of the Afaka and Ol Chiki scripts, each invented in different parts of the world in the last century, both attributed their vowels for 'O' to the shape of the mouth when making this sound.{{or|date=February 2013}}

Use in writing systems

English

The letter {{angbr|o}} is the fourth most common letter in the English alphabet.^[2] Like the other English vowel letters, it has associated "long" and "short" pronunciations. The "long" {{angbr|o}} as in boat is actually most often a diphthong {{IPAc-en|oʊ}} (realized dialectically anywhere from {{IPA|[o]}} to {{IPA|[əʊ]}}). In English there is also a "short" {{angbr|o}} as in fox, {{IPAc-en|ɒ}}, which sounds slightly different in different dialects. In most dialects of British English, it is either an open-mid back rounded vowel {{IPA|[ɔ]}} or an open back rounded vowel {{IPA|[ɒ]}}; in American English, it is most commonly an unrounded back {{IPA|[ɑ]}} to a central vowel {{IPA|[a]}}.

Common digraphs include {{angbr|oo}}, which represents either {{IPAc-en|uː}} or {{IPAc-en|ʊ}}; {{angbr|oi}} or {{angbr|oy}}, which typically represents the diphthong {{IPAc-en|ɔɪ}}, and {{angbr|ao}}, {{angbr|oe}}, and {{angbr|ou}} which represent a variety of pronunciations depending on context and etymology.

In other contexts, especially before a letter with a minim, {{angbr|o}} may represent the sound {{IPAc-en|ʌ}}, as in 'son' or 'love'. It can also represent the semivowel {{IPAc-en|w}} as in choir or quinoa.

In English, the letter {{angbr|o}} in isolation before a noun, usually capitalized, marks the vocative case, as in the titles to O Canada or O Captain! My Captain! or certain verses of the Bible.^[3]

Other languages

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, {{angbr|{{IPA|o}}}} represents the close-mid back rounded vowel.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

Computing codes

Other representations

See also

References

1. ^"O" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989);Chambers-Happap, "oes" op. cit. Oes is the plural of the name of the letter. The plural of the letter itself is rendered Os, O's, os, o's.
2. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.math.cornell.edu/~mec/2003-2004/cryptography/subs/frequencies.html|title=Frequency Table|website=www.math.cornell.edu}}
3. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=%22o+lord%22&qs_version=KJV |title=Quick search: "o lord" |publisher= |date= |accessdate=2013-12-05}}
4. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04132-n2740-phonetic.pdf|title=L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS|date=2004-04-19|first=Peter|last=Constable}}
5. ^¹{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2006/06027-n3027-medieval.pdf|title=L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS|date=2006-01-30|first1=Michael|last1=Everson|first2=Peter|last2=Baker|first3=António|last3=Emiliano|first4=Florian|last4=Grammel|first5=Odd Einar|last5=Haugen|first6=Diana|last6=Luft|first7=Susana|last7=Pedro|first8=Gerd|last8=Schumacher|first9=Andreas|last9=Stötzner}}
6. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2006/06036-lma-proposal.pdf|title=L2/06-036: Proposal to encode characters for Ordbok över Finlands svenska folkmål in the UCS|date=2006-01-26|first1=Therese|last1=Lemonen|first2=Klaas|last2=Ruppel|first3=Erkki I.|last3=Kolehmainen|first4=Caroline|last4=Sandström}}
7. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2002/02141-n2419-uralic-phonetic.pdf|title=L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS|date=2002-03-20|first1=Michael|last1=Everson|authorlink1=Michael Everson|display-authors=etal}}
8. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2011/11202-n4081-teuthonista.pdf|title=L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode “Teuthonista” phonetic characters in the UCS|date=2011-06-02|first1=Michael|last1=Everson|first2=Alois|last2=Dicklberger|first3=Karl|last3=Pentzlin|first4=Eveline|last4=Wandl-Vogt}}
9. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04191-n2788-laryngeals.pdf|title=L2/04-191: Proposal to encode six Indo-Europeanist phonetic characters in the UCS|date=2004-06-07|first1=Deborah|last1=Anderson|first2=Michael|last2=Everson}}
10. ^{{cite web|url=http://jeff560.tripod.com/set.html|title=Earliest Uses of Symbols of Set Theory and Logic|website=jeff560.tripod.com}}