O with macron (majuscule: Ō, minuscule: ō) is an additional letter of the Latin script, formed from the base letter O with the addition of the macron diacritic mark.

It is used in various Polynesian languages, such as Cook Islands Māori, Dorig, Hawaiian, Hiw, Māori, Marshallese, Marquesan, Mwotlap, Samoan, Tahitian, Tongan, and Vurës, as well as Latgalian, Livonian, Samogitian, and Silesian in Central Europe, Nahuatl in Mexico, Ewondo in Cameroon, and Ogba in Nigeria. The letter is also used in the Hepburn romanization of Japanese, the pinyin romanization system of Standard Chinese, and the ISO 9 standard for romanization of Cyrillic characters.

Usage

Oceanic languages

The letter Ō is present in many Polynesian languages, where it usually represents the long version of the sound represented by the letter O. Most commonly, it represents the long close-mid back rounded vowel sound ([o:]). It is the case for, among others, Cook Islands Māori, Hawaiian, Marquesan, Tahitian, and Tongan.

In Māori it can be pronounced either as a long close-mid back rounded vowel sound ([o:]), or a long open-mid back rounded vowel sound ([ɔː]).

In Vurës and Hiw, it is pronounced as a close-mid back rounded vowel sound ([o]), in Samoan, as open-mid back rounded vowel sound ([ɔː]), in Dorig, and Mwotlap, as a near-close near-back rounded vowel sound ([ʊ]), and in Marshallese, as a close-mid back unrounded vowel sound ([ɤ]).

European languages

The letter Ō is used in the Silesian primer alphabet, one of two popular writing systems of Silesian language. Depending on a dialect, it represents the sounds in the range between a close-mid back rounded vowel ([o]) and a close back rounded vowel ([u]). In the Steuer's Silesian alphabet, and the Silesian Phonetic Alphabet, two other writing systems, this function is represented by the letter Ů.

In Latvia, the letter is present in Latgalian and Livonian, where it represents, respectively, a long open-mid back rounded vowel ([ɔ:]), and a long close-mid back rounded vowel sound ([o:]). It is also used in Samogitian, spoken in Lithuania, for both of those sounds.

African languages

In the Ewondo language, Ō is used to represent the mid tone of a close-mid back rounded vowel sound ([o]). The letter is also present in Ogba language, where a macron diacritic mark is used to indicate a tonal downstep.

Indigenous languages of the Americas

In Michel Launey's normalized orthography of Nahuatl, Ō is used to represent a long close-mid back rounded vowel sound ([o:]). In traditional orthography, such function is done by either U or V.

Romanizations

In the Hepburn romanization of Japanese, the letter Ō is used to represent a long close-mid back rounded vowel sound ([o:]).

In the pinyin romanization system of Standard Chinese, Ō is used to represent a first tone (flat or high-level tone) of an open-mid back rounded vowel sound ([ɔ˥]).

In the ISO 9 standard for transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters, Ō is used to represent the letter O with macron (majuscule: О̄, minuscule: о̄).

Computing codes

References