Ó

Ó, ó (o-acute) is a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian languages. This letter also appears in the Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Galician languages as a variant of letter “o”. It is sometimes also used in English for loanwords.

Usage in various languages

English

Used for loanwords like periódico, peón, piñón or bodegón (Spanish).

Chinese

In Chinese pinyin ó is the yángpíng tone (阳平, high-rising tone) of "o".

Czech and Slovak

Ó is the 24th letter of the Czech alphabet and the 28th letter of the Slovak alphabet. It represents /oː/.

Faroese

Ó is the 18th letter of the Faroese alphabet and represents /œ/ or /ɔuː/.

Icelandic

Ó is the 19th letter of the Icelandic alphabet and represents /oṷ/.

Irish

Ó is widely used in Irish where it has various meanings:

• the preposition ó "from"
• the patronymic term Ó "grandson, (usually male) descendant", first or second cousin" (variants: Ua, Uí, Í Uaí).^[1] When Irish names were anglicized, the Ó commonly was either dropped or written as O'.
• the interjection ó "oh"

Italian

In Italian ó is an optional symbol (especially used in dictionaries) which is sometimes used to indicate that a stressed o should be pronounced with a close sound: e.g. córso [ˈkorso], "course", as opposed to còrso [ˈkɔrso], "Corsican" (but both are commonly written with no accent marks when the context is clear); a similar process may occur with é and è, as in pésca, "fishing", and pèsca "peach".

Kashubian

Ó is the 23rd letter of the Kashubian alphabet and represents /o/. It also represents /u/ in southern dialects.

Hungarian

Ó is the 25th letter of the Hungarian alphabet. It represents /oː/.

Polish

<span style="font-feature-settings: 'locl' lang="pl">Ó is the 21st letter of the Polish alphabet, and represents /u/.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, ó is used to mark a stressed /ɔ/ in words whose stressed syllable is in an unpredictable location within the word, as in "pó" (dust) and "óculos" (glasses). Where the location of the stressed syllable is predictable, the acute accent is not used. Ó /ɔ/ contrasts with ô, pronounced /o/.

Scottish Gaelic

Ó was once widely used in Scottish, but has now been largely superseded by "ò". It can still be seen in certain writings, but it is no longer used in standard orthography.

Spanish

Ó is used in the Spanish language to denote an 'o' syllable with abnormal stress.

Sorbian

Ó represents /uʊ/ in Upper Sorbian and represents /ɛ/ or /ɨ/ in but not limited to Lower Sorbian.

Vietnamese

In Vietnamese alphabet ó is the sắc tone (high-rising tone) of “o”.

Character mappings

See also

• Acute accent

References