Ø

Ø (ø) is a vowel (bwym) and a letter (jixbuo) used in the Danish, Norwegian languages.

MLT Usage

In Modern Literal Taiwanese, this letter is used for the sound written in POJ and TRS as a plain o, and spoken variously as [o], [ɤ], [ə]. For example, hør (good), øar (oyster), ørgiøo (jelly fig), and Ørciw (Australia) are all written with ø. The finals ø and iø appear in all seven tones, including øh and iøh.

The digraph øe can be used for unified spelling across dialects.

Computer Input

• In macOS, hold the option key while pressing o (or O).
• On Microsoft Windows:
  • Alt-0248: hold Alt and press 0248 on the keypad
  • using the "United States-International" keyboard setting, it can be typed by holding down the "Alt-Gr" (right Alt) key and pressing "L".
• In MS Word and EmEditor, the ø can be typed with the following keystroke: ^/o (Ctrl+Slash+o). This means hold Ctrl press Slash, release, then press o.
• In Mozilla Firefox with the abcTajpu plugin, one can input this by typing o, /, then Insert.

• In Unicode, Ø is U+00D8 and ø is U+00F8 .
• In HTML, named character reference (numeric character reference):
  • Ø (Ø)
  • ø (ø)
• In ISO 8859-1, the letter ø is hex number F8.
• It is not in the ASCII seven-bit character set.
• It is not in the big5 code table. A possible workaround might be to use a Greek letter encoded in big5 (range 0xA344 to 0xA373).

History in Written Taiwanese

Taiwanese Modern Spelling System originally used an "o" crossed by a backslash. This was replaced by "ø" in Modern Literal Taiwanese. In some cases it is convenient to use "Q" or "0" in place of "ø".

Other uses

Ø, Denmark is a piece of land in the valley of the Nørreå in the eastern part of Jutland, Denmark. Its name means "island" (Danish: ø; Taigie: tøfsu).