Kannada letter Oo

A long o vowel, held longer than Kannada’s short ಒ.

ಓ is an independent letter at the start of a syllable with no consonant before it, as in ಓದು (“read, study”). After a consonant, Kannada writes the same vowel with dependent sign ೋ, attached to that consonant, as in ಕೋ. Short ಒ is its short-vowel counterpart.

Kannada writing developed from the Brahmi script through Kadamba and Chalukya forms. Inscriptions show an early Telugu–Kannada branch in the 4th–7th centuries; the earliest known texts in Old Kannada, an earlier form of the language, date to 450 CE. In digital text, ೋ is multi-part for shaping but displays as one vowel sign.