Öor öis a character that represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter " o " modified with an umlaut or diaeresis. In many languages, the letter "ö", or the "o" modified with an umlaut, is used to denote the close- or open-mid front rounded vowels [ ø ] listen or [ œ ] listen.
In languages without such vowels, the character is known as an "o with diaeresis " and denotes a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified [ o ]. The letter o with umlaut ö appears in the German alphabet. It represents the umlauted form of oresulting in [ œ ] or [ ø ].
The letter is often collated together with o in the German alphabet, but there are exceptions which collate it like oe or OE. The letter also occurs in some languages that have adopted German names or spellings, but it is not normally a part of those alphabets.
In Danish and Norwegian, ö was previously used in place of ø in older texts to distinguish between open and closed ö-sounds. It is also used when confusion with other symbols could occur, on maps for instance. The Dano-Norwegian ø is, like the German öa development of oe and can be compared with the French œ.
In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet or in limited character sets such as ASCIIo -umlaut is frequently replaced with the digraph oe. The letter ö also occurs in two other Germanic languages Praktiska frågor Swedish and Icelandicbut it is regarded there as a separate letter, not as an orthographic variation of the letter o.
In certain languages, the letter ö cannot be written as "oe" because minimal pairs exist between ö and oe and also with ooöö and öeas in Finnish eläinkö "animal? Germanic umlaut. If the character ö is unavailable, o is substituted and context is relied upon for inference of the intended meaning.
In Volapük, ö can be written as oybut never as oe. In Romagnolö is used to represent [ɔə~ɔː]e. In mountain dialects of Emilianit is used to represent [ø]e. In the Seneca languageö is used to represent [ɔ̃]a back mid rounded nasalized vowel.
In Swedish, the letter ö is also used as the one-letter word for an islandwhich is not to be mixed with the actual letter. Ö in this sense is also a Swedish-language surname. In the Seri languageö indicates the labialization of the previous consonant, e.
In some alphabets it is collated as an independent letter, sometimes by placing it at or near the end of the alphabet, such as after ZÅ and Ä in Swedish and Finnish, after ÝZÞ and Æ in Icelandic, and after VWÕ and Ä in Estonian thus fulfilling the place of omegafor example in the Finnish expression aasta ööhön "from A to Z", literally "from A to Ö".
However, in Hungarian, and in the Turkish alphabet and other Turkic alphabets that have öit is an independent letter between o and p. O with diaeresis occurs in several languages ö centrum use diaereses.