- This article is about the typographic ligature, for other uses, see Oe
Œthel (pronounced /ˈɛðəl/) is a Roman script letter (Œ, œ) used in medieval and early modern Latin, and in modern French, and also the vowel sound it represents. The letter is a ligature of o and e. In Old English the name was spelled eðel. Another name for this symbol is œgule.
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Overview
The combination denotes a diphthong, pronounced [oi̯], that had a value similar to English OI. It was used in borrowings from Greek words having the diphthong OI (ΟΙ, οι). Both classical and modern practice is to write the letters separately, but the ligature was used in medieval and early modern writings, in part because œ was reduced to a simple vowel ([e]) in late Latin.
Πin different languages
English
Borrowings into English from Latin words featuring œ (which in turn are often from Greek words featuring οι) have changed to the letter e, especially in American English. For example, fœderal has become federal in English, while phœnix can be spelled phenix only in American English. In those words that have not changed to e, it has become generally acceptable to write any such œ as oe in English. Indeed, recent dictionaries generally list only the form without a ligature. In all such words, the œ, oe, or e is pronounced /iː/, or /ɛ/ in a few cases.
Germanic languages
In German, Ö (O with umlaut) is also a representation of a former oe combination; however, it does not represent a diphthong, but rather either one of the simple vowels /œ/ or /ø/. Nevertheless, classical borrowings into German commonly render Latin oe as ö, as in Fötus or föderal. In Danish, Faroese, and Norwegian the equivalent letter is Ø. Ö is also a letter in Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Estonian, Hungarian and Turkish. In the Old Norse language there was a distinction in writing between Ø (representing the short sound /ø/) and Œ (representing the long sound /øː/).
In Romance languages
In French, œ (called e dans l'o, meaning "e in o" but also a pun as it sounds like œufs dans l'eau, meaning "eggs in water") is a true linguistic ligature, not just a typographic one (like the fi or fl ligatures), reflecting etymology. It is most prominent in the words cœur ("heart"), sœur ("sister"), œuf ("egg") and œil ("eye"), in which it represents the sound /œ/ or /ø/. French also uses œ in direct borrowings from Latin and Greek. So, "cœliac" in French is cœliaque. In such cases, the œ is pronounced /e/. In some words, e.g. phénix, the œ is changed to a more French é. When oe occurs in French without the ligature, it is pronounced /wa/, just like words spelt with oi. The most common words of this type are poêle ("stove", "frying pan") and moelleux ("soft"). If the oe is not to be pronounced thus, then a diaeresis, acute or grave accent needs to be added in order to indicate that the vowels should be pronounced separately. For example, Noël, poésie, poète. The exception to this rule is the prefix co-, which is always pronounced /ko/ in hiatus with the following vowel, e.g. coentreprise ("joint venture") or coefficient ("ratio", "coefficient") and does not require any accent on the e to make this so. The most common input methods for computers (made by Microsoft) make it easy to enter most special characters used in French, but provide no obvious way to enter œ. Word processors such as MS Word automatically correct words like soeur to sœur, but if another program is used (e.g. an instant messenger, or a browser) the word will be sent uncorrected. A cursory examination shows that incorrect oe spellings predominate on the Internet, whereas in standard printed matter it is all but unheard-of. Note: To create "œ" in Word use <Ctrl> and "&" followed by "o".
International
The symbol [œ] is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the open-mid front rounded vowel. The small capital variant [ɶ] corresponds to a different phone, the open front rounded vowel, which so far has not been confirmed to exist as a phoneme of its own in any language.
In computing
For computers, when using the Unicode character set, the codes for Œ and œ are respectively U+0152 and U+0153 in hexadecimal. In ISO-8859-15, Œ is 0xBC and œ 0xBD in hexadecimal. In HTML, the HTML character entity references Œ and œ can also be used. In Windows-1252, at positions 0x8C and 0x9C. In Mac-Roman, they are at positions 0xCE and 0xCF. The LaTeX commands are \oe and \OE . Œ and œ were removed from ISO-8859-1 (as well as derived standards, such as IBM code page 850 and Windows-1252), a character map obsoleted by Unicode but still widespread in internet protocols and applications that do not support full Unicode. Œ is the only character in modern French that is not included in ISO-8859-1, and this has led to it becoming replaced by 'oe' in many computer-assisted publications (including printed magazines and newspapers). Another reason is that œ is also absent from French keyboards, and as a result few people know how to input it. There are two explanations as to the removal of Œ and œ from ISO-8859-1: one is that the ISO French delegate admitted that it was only a typographical ligature. The other is that the French delegate missed the committee session and the other delegates decided to remove it[1].
Inputting Œ and œ
If the system utilized is in the IBM437 or IBM850 codepages, Œ and œ can be entered by holding the Alt key while typing in 0338 for Œ or 0156 for œ on the number pad on Windows systems. In Mac OS X (Macintosh computers), using a CA-English or US-English keyboard, the character œ may be generated by the following keyboard shortcut: hold down the Option key while pressing the letter q (also expressed as Option-q). On a DE-German keyboard, use Option-ö to generate the œ. Holding down the shift key in addition to either combination will generate the capital Œ. If preferred, the Macintosh Character Palette can also be used to enter special characters[2].
See also
External links
- Paleography: Special Characters in English Manuscripts, course notes
| The ISO basic Latin alphabet | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | |
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history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters
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