The letter
ö also occurs in two other
Germanic languages:
Swedish and
Icelandic, but it is regarded there as a separate letter, not as an orthographic variation of the letter
o. Apart from Germanic languages, it occurs in the
Uralic languages such as
Finnish,
Karelian,
Veps,
Estonian,
Southern Sami, and
Hungarian, in the
Turkic languages such as
Azeri,
Turkish,
Turkmen,
Uyghur (
Latin script),
Crimean Tatar,
Kazakh, and in the
Uto-Aztecan language Hopi, where it represents the
vowel sounds . Its name in
Finnish,
Swedish,
Icelandic,
Estonian,
Azeri,
Turkish,
Turkmen,
Uyghur,
Crimean Tatar,
Hungarian,
Votic and
Volapük is
Öö , not "O with two dots" since is not a variant of the vowel but a distinct phoneme. In mountain dialects of
Emilian, it is used to represent , e.g.
tött "all". In the
Dutch language, appears only as O-diaeresis - see below. The sound is spelled with the digraph , as in 'door'. In the Dutch-based orthographies of
Low Saxon,
Limburgish and
Ripuarian, is used only for the short (as in
Maastrichtian 'bus'), whereas the long (lowered to in Maastricht) and are typically written unambiguously with (since it is often an umlauted form of , in IPA) and , the latter following the Standard Dutch spelling. The example words (in Maastrichtian) are 'a lot' and 'beech'. The short close-mid (which instead can be transcribed in IPA with ) tends to be spelled with (as in Maastrichtian 'voice'), but this can also be used for in open syllables, again following the Standard Dutch spelling. On the German side of the border, can be used for any of the (thus ), whereas is always written distinctly, as . is never used for any of the aforementioned front vowels; instead, it denotes the
close back rounded vowel , as in Standard German. The length is usually disambiguated by doubling the following consonant (which denotes the short ), not doubling it or adding a silent after (both denoting the long ). The exact height normally remains ambiguous, but the open-mid can be disambiguated by adding a
grave accent above , as in (thus ), similarly to some
Swiss German orthographies. This is not the usual practice, not least because the diacritics end up stacked on top of one another. In certain languages, the letter
ö cannot be written as "oe" because
minimal pairs exist between
ö and
oe (and also with
oo,
öö and
öe), as in Finnish
eläinkö "animal?" (interrogative) vs.
eläinkoe "animal test" (cf.
Germanic umlaut). If the character
ö is unavailable,
o is substituted and context is relied upon for inference of the intended meaning. In Volapük,
ö can be written as
oy, but never as
oe. In the aforementioned Dutch-based orthographies of Low Saxon, Limburgish and Ripuarian, also cannot be written with because the latter denotes the close back , as in Standard Dutch. Thus, Maastrichtian 'bus' cannot be spelled * because it is not pronounced * (cf. 'mouse'). The German-based orthographies, in which is always spelled , have no such limitation. In those, is read as identical with , same as in Standard German. In
Romagnol,
ö is used to represent , e.g.
cöt "cooked". In the
Seneca language,
ö is used to represent , a back mid rounded nasalized vowel. In Swedish, the letter
ö is also used as the one-letter word for an
island, which is not to be mixed with the actual letter.
Ö in this sense is also a Swedish-language surname. In the
Seri language,
ö indicates the
labialization of the previous consonant, e.g.
cöihiin "
sanderling".
Alphabetical position In some alphabets it is
collated as an independent letter, sometimes by placing it at or near the end of the alphabet, such as after
Z,
Å and
Ä in Swedish and Finnish, after
Ý, (
Z),
Þ and
Æ in Icelandic, and after
V, (
W),
Õ and
Ä in Estonian (thus fulfilling the place of
omega, for example in the Finnish expression
aasta ööhön "from A to Z", literally "from A to Ö"). However, in Hungarian, and in the
Turkish alphabet and other
Turkic alphabets that have
ö, it is an independent letter between
o and
p. ==
O-diaeresis ==