Latin omega

Not to be confused with Ꙍ or ω.

Latin omega, or simply omega, is an additional letter of the Latin alphabet, based on the lowercase shape of the Greek letter omega ⟨ω⟩. It was included as a Latin letter in the Mann and Dalby 1982 revision of the African reference alphabet and has been used as such in some publications in the Kulango languages in Côte d'Ivoire in the 1990s. In other Kulango publications the letters V with hook ⟨Ʋ⟩ or Latin upsilon ⟨Ʊ⟩ are found instead. The Italian humanist Giovan Giωrgio Trissino proposed in 1524 a reform of Italian orthography that included lowercase and uppercase omega for the open ⟨o⟩ sound ([ɔ]).^[1] He later re-assigned it to the closed ⟨o⟩ ([o]).^[2]

Example of uppercase and lowercase Latin omega.

Encoding

Character information

Preview	Ꞷ		ꞷ		ɷ		𐞤
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA		LATIN SMALL LETTER OMEGA		LATIN SMALL LETTER CLOSED OMEGA		MODIFIER LETTER SMALL CLOSED OMEGA
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	42934	U+A7B6	42935	U+A7B7	631	U+0277	67492	U+107A4
UTF-8	234 158 182	EA 9E B6	234 158 183	EA 9E B7	201 183	C9 B7	240 144 158 164	F0 90 9E A4
UTF-16	42934	A7B6	42935	A7B7	631	0277	55297 57252	D801 DFA4
Numeric character reference	Ꞷ	Ꞷ	ꞷ	ꞷ	ɷ	ɷ	𐞤	𐞤

See also

• Ω ω : Greek letter Omega
• Ѡ ѡ : Cyrillic letter Omega

Bibliography

1. Trissino, Giovan Giωrgio (1524). De le lettere nuωvamente aggiunte ne la lingua Italiana  (in Italian) – via Wikisource. ma quando ʃi prenderà tωʃco per veneno, ε tωrre per pigliare, ciωὲ infinito di tωglio vεrbo, alhora ʃi ʃcriverà per ω apεrto;[...] le quali tutte hanno le loro majuʃcule, che ʃono Ɛ, Ꞷ, Ӡ, J, V.
2. D'Achille, Paolo (2011). "Trissino, Gian Giorgio in "Enciclopedia dell'Italiano"". www.treccani.it (in Italian). Treccani. Retrieved 19 October 2022.

• Pascal Boyeldieu, Stefan Elders, Gudrun Miehe. 2008. Grammaire koulango (parler de Bouna, Côte d’Ivoire). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. ISBN 978-3-89645-610-6
• Diocèse de Bondoukou Nassian. 1992. Syllabaire koulango : réservé aux élèves des cours bibliques en Koulango (Inspiré par les syllabaires de la Société Internationale de Linguistique, collection: « Je lis ma langue », Nouvelles Éditions Africaines / EDICEF). Nassian: Diocèse de Bondoukou.
• Mann, Michael and David Dalby. 1987. A thesaurus of African languages: A classified and annotated inventory of the spoken languages of Africa with an appendix on their written representation. London: Hans Zell Publishers.
• Michael Everson, Denis Jacquerye, Chris Lilley. Proposal for the addition of ten Latin characters to the UCS. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2, Document N4297, 2012-07-26.
• Henry Frieland Buckner. A Grammar of Maskωke, or Creek Language, Marion, Alabama, 1860.