O͘, oro͘, is one of the sixHokkienvowels as written in thePe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ)orthography. It is pronounced[ɔ], like the pronunciation of⟨aw⟩ in "law". The orthography also uses diacritics to indicatetone, and the standard letter without adiacritic represents the vowel in the first or fourth tone (with the fourth tone used in syllables with astop consonant, i.e.⟨-p⟩,⟨-t⟩,⟨-k⟩,⟨-h⟩/-ʔ/, and the first tone used in other cases). The other possible tone categories require one of the following tonal symbols to be written above it:
The character was introduced by theXiamen-based missionaryElihu Doty in the mid-nineteenth century, as a way to distinguish the Hokkien vowels/o/ and/ɔ/ (the latter becoming⟨o͘⟩).[1] Since then it has become established in the Pe̍h-ōe-jī orthography, with only occasional deviations early in its usage – one example beingCarstairs Douglas's 1873Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy, where he replaced the⟨o͘ ⟩ with⟨ө̛ ⟩ (an o with a curl, similar to that of theEnglish Phonotypic Alphabet),[2] and a second example being Tan Siew Imm's 2016 dictionary ofPenang Hokkien, where she replaced the⟨o͘ ⟩ with⟨ɵ⟩.[3]
In theUnicode computer encoding, it is a normal Latino followed byU+0358 ◌͘COMBINING DOT ABOVE RIGHT, and is not to be confused with the VietnameseƠ. This letter isnot well-supported by fonts and is often typed as eithero· (using theinterpunct),o• (using thebullet),o' (using theapostrophe),oo (as used inTâi-lô forTaiwanese Hokkien andWāpuro rōmaji forJapanese), orou (as used inWāpuro rōmaji forJapanese).
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