Cyrillic Small Letter O

Switch to a Cyrillic keyboard layout and press J.

On the standard Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian ЙЦУКЕН layouts, J types о and Shift+J types О. Phonetic and other Cyrillic layouts may use a different key. If a Latin o appears, the active input layout is still Latin.

Is Cyrillic о the same as Latin o?

No. They look alike but are different characters.

Software keeps the two apart, so a word mixing them won't match in search, and a Latin-looking web address or username can hide a Cyrillic о.

The resemblance is family history: Cyrillic took many letter shapes from Greek, as Latin did earlier. Cyrillic grew up for early Slavic Christian texts and in Bulgaria later replaced Glagolitic, an older Slavic alphabet. Early Cyrillic inscriptions include examples dated 921, 931, and 943. Church Slavonic, the language of Slavic Orthodox worship, also used a wide ѻ at word starts and a narrow ᲂ.

What sound does Cyrillic о make?

A clear o — except in unstressed Russian syllables.

In Ukrainian, о keeps its clear o sound whether stressed or not. In Russian, an unstressed о usually sounds like а: молоко is said roughly «ма-ла-КО». The spelling still uses о, so don't replace it with а.