O, the German Kurrent letter o
O is the 15th letter of the German alphabet, representing a back rounded vowel, pronounced as close-mid /oː/ in words like 'Sohn' and open-mid /ɔ/ in words like 'Ort'. In German Kurrent handwriting, it has a distinct historical ductus taught across German-speaking Europe until 1941.
In words
Sonntag · Sunday
Oktober · October
History
The letter O occupies the 15th position in the German alphabet. Phonetically, it represents a back rounded vowel, pronounced as close-mid /oː/ in words like 'Sohn' and open-mid /ɔ/ in words like 'Ort'.
Lowercase o in Kurrent is a compact, oval shape drawn counter-clockwise in the middle zone. It closes on the upper right side with a small horizontal or looped connecting stroke that leads directly to the following letter. Capital O is a grand, oval flourish in the upper two zones, often closed with an internal loop.
The letter o appears in essential genealogical records in words such as 'Ort' (place), 'Oheim' (uncle), 'Ost' (east), and baptismal terms. When modified with an umlaut (ö), older manuscripts often write a tiny superscript e above the o.
O is the fifteenth most frequent letter in German text, at about 2.5% of all letters, which makes it the rarest of the vowels.[1] German uses o markedly less often than the Romance and Slavic languages do.[2]
Sources
- [1] O — Wikipedia (German) — 15th most frequent, the rarest vowel, 2.51% (accessed 2026-10-14)
- [2] Buchstabenhäufigkeit — Wikipedia (German) — o rarer in German than in Romance and Slavic languages (accessed 2026-10-14)