Talk:Ø

Deprecated?

The article says:

In HTML, the alternative (now becoming deprecated) coding form for the letter Ø is: Ø

What you mean by "now becoming deprecated"? --Zundark 14:41 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Since ISO 8859-1 (being the default coding for web pages), and Unicode has proper ways of coding Ø, there is normally no reason to use the Oring coding. Especially so, since it renders for instance Norwegian prose next to unreadable in HTML source form (or [[Wiki] "page edit" form, if you like). -- Egil 14:57 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Oh, you mean deprecated in Wikipedia. I'm not sure it's usually a good idea to talk about Wikipedia in articles not directly related to Wikipedia, but if you do so then you need to make it clear that that's what you're doing. --Zundark 15:15 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

No, I definitely mean in HTML in general. Wiki is just an obvious and nearby example. -- Egil 15:23 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Ø is not deprecated in the current HTML standard, and it seems unlikely that there are any plans to deprecate it in a later HTML standard. The HTML standard also makes it clear that there is no default character encoding for web pages. (HTTP has ISO 8859-1 as a default, but the HTML standard explicitly overrides this. In reply to your comment below, I don't think this is due to political correctness, just that it didn't work properly in practice.) --Zundark 16:38 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

OK, forget deprecated, then. Letting the web server specify ISO 8859-1 as character coding works very well, thank you. Point is, sorry for repating this but it seems to be required: Norwegian prose written using Oring etc. is unreadable. So if you want to write Norwegian, ensure your server is set up right, and avoid Oring like the plague. If you normally write in some completely different alphabet, then either switch to Unicode or use the odd oring for those rare cases you would want to spell Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson exactly right.

Just to make it clear: what I was referring to when I said that it didn't work properly in practice was the idea of defaulting to ISO-8859-1 when the server doesn't specify a character encoding. If the server actually specifies ISO-8859-1 then presumably it means it, and everything should work fine. --Zundark 18:00 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

When did Arabs, Russians, Greeks, Japanese, Hebrew, Thaiwanese and "Central European"s switch to using ISO 8859-1 by default? On my browser, Ø looks like ط, Ш, Ψ, ﾘ, ״, ุ and Ř, respectively. كسيپ Cyp 15:57 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

AFAIK W3C used to denote ISO 8859-1 as a default. Perhaps that has changed due to reasons of political correctness, so let me rephrase this: In an environment where ISO 8859-1 is set up as default coding by the web server, then please use Ø instead of Oslash when writing Danish or Norwegian. Happy? Egil 16:26 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

A Danish word

I've added a comment on "&Oslash" as a Danish word, throw it out if it's uninteresting. In Norwegian "&Oslash" has the same meaning; however I'm not sure whether "Øy" or "ø" is used more frequently, probably both would qualify. In Swedish it is, of course, "Ö".

Ø for island in Norwegian would be very archaic, from the "Danish age". -- Egil

NPOV issues

"Some Danes and Norwegians take offence" is NPOV. -- Toby 23:36 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

No, it is not. -- Egil

Have you read the page on NPOV? So long as some Danes and Norwegians take this offence, then it's NPOV to mention this and explain why. We can also explain why some think that it's silly to take offence (or whatever other opinions are). -- Toby 02:53 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

It is an undeniable fact that some Danes and Norwegians take offence at the notion that the letter is a modified "O". It may be a fact that many people dislike, but it is still a fact.

Oh, and if I wore a certain Danish name and somebody changed its ø into an o I might decide to tell them exactly what they had just called me.

I believe that a warning against fumbling with unknown letters is appropriate.--Troels Nybo 20:14, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That "ø" is also an entire word in Danish is not relevant on Wikipedia, which isn't a dictionary of Danish. That it is even an entire word -- not just one letter of that word, but even the whole thing -- is what makes it relevant. -- Toby 04:55 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Shouldn't all alphabet letter has a name and a sound? This article didn't mention either. It may be impossible to reproduce the same name and sound in English. But there may be a standard way to transliterate. If Chinese can be transliterated, there is no reason why this cannot.

I don't know the language, so I cannot contribute. For example, in the various alphabets, we can say

W is called 'double yew' and it makes the 'wa' sound;
Z is called 'zee' in the US or 'ezeh' in the UK, it makes the sound 'zee';
Δ is called 'delta';
ק is called 'Qof';
あ is called 'Ah' etc.

English speakers who don't know the language should be able to read this article aloud to a blind person. As it stands now, this article cannot be read aloud. Can someone fix it?

-- Kowloonese

It can indeed be read aloud; we just haven't made it clear how. I'll try to work on that. -- Toby 10:05 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

---

I marked my last edit as minor, but I shouldn't have. I also added the IPA meaning, and helped out Kowloonese above. -- Toby 10:17 May 13, 2003 (UTC)

Okay... English speakers can pronounce it now (or try to ^_^), but does the letter itself have a name? Like "doubleyew" for W, "aye" for I and "vee" for V? Forgive me if I'm reading too quickly or something, but I can't seem to find a name for the letter... only thing there I can see is the use meaning island, but that's like saying the letter I only means "First-person reference to the self," I think. If it doesn't have a name, perhaps that should be specified? --Sparky the Seventh Chaos 05:50, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

The name of the letter "ø" is pronounced "ø", at least in Danish. The letters "æ" and "å" are also called the same as the sound they represent. Κσυπ Cyp   11:42, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Also in standard Norwegian and Swedish. Btw, I think that a scandinavian talking about the other scandinavian variants æ/ä , ø/ö often would call it a "Norwegian/Danish ä" or "Swedish ø" or something like that.

Unlike the english language, in scandinavian, vowels are pronounced exactly as written. As an example, in norwegian, the five first letters in the alphabet would be read "a", "be", "se", "de" and "e". Same with ø, it's simply read "ø". In english, "ø" sounds pretty much like "Uuh". 80.212.251.253 17:02, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

---

How about it's use in photography, or lenses?

The disambiguation page already mentions the use of "Ø" (or a similar character) as a diameter symbol. --Ingeborg S. Nordén 16:22, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Missing in older codepages

Added the fact that Ø was missing in standard editions of older operating systems. In MS-DOS, if a Norwegian codepage wasn't installed, my name could never be rendered correctly (even if it was stored the right way in a text file, when the Norwegian codepage was installed), which always annoyed me. This happened even if the keyb no command was invoked; something like mode con codepage prepare (which used memory) had to be run in as well. If anyone can describe this in a more accurate way (I am not sure I remember all the details) the sentence should be improved. This is, as far as I remember, still a problem when switching between command-line view and Windows progams (such as Notepad and Edit) in more recent Windows versions. Not sure about the latest WinXP though. I think this merits a sentence in this article (though not a discussion post this long...) Jørgen 20:14, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

You're telling me! Before Windows revised the codepage, writing Danish and Norwegian on an American PC required me to run a batch file that substituted æ/ø/å for other characters I typed. --Ingeborg S. Nordén 16:26, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Python

Nothing about MOnty Python and the Holy Grail's "A møøse bit my sister..."? Churchh 15:14, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

That's what Uncyclopedia is for. (The Swedish Chef article itself already mentions the use of "ø" in Bork Bork Bork, by the way. Do the articles for other foreign letters mention their use in fictional languages?) --Ingeborg S. Nordén 16:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

What does this mean?

In the Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Tatar, Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, German, Estonian, Romanian and Hungarian alphabets, the letter "Ö" is the equivalent, but in some of these alphabets it is present. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 00:11, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand it. The languages in question have an equivalent letter (Ö ö), but "Ø and ø" only appear in Danish, Norwegian and Faroese. If a Swedish person write about a Dane or Norwegian, it would be normal to write the person's name the original language - e.g. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson - but that's about it. It is also customary for Scandinavians to use the native spellings for geographical locations (although Swedes refer to Copenhagen as Köpenhamn rather than the Danish København). Valentinian ^{T / C} 09:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Really, a Swedish person reading "Ø or ø" would understand it, knowing that it's their way of writing "Ö" or "ö". It could basicly be considered the same character written in different ways.

Name of the letter

Does this letter have a name? Is it the same as its pronunciation? The article doesn't clearly state either and simply refers to it as "Ø." Whether or not it has one should be added. I realize that it was mentioned above.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Lowtech42 06:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The name is mentioned here -- Fyslee/talk 22:13, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm guessing that "slash o" is the native name for it as well? Lowtech42 06:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

A common misunderstanding. Danes and Norwegians don't consider it a modified "O" but a completely distinct letter, so it is referred to simply by the vowel sounds it makes (same system with Æ and Å, btw). Danish and Norwegian alphabet contains a recording of the Dane reciting the alphabet. It is the second-to-last sound. Valentinian ^{T / C} 07:09, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Not a macrophage

I just deleted this from the uses list:

• mø, short for macrophage

Biologists do abbreviate macrophage to 'MΦ' - but that's a phi, not an Ø! 'Ph' being the initial sound in 'phage', you see.

-- Tom Anderson 2008-02-21 2224 +0000 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.56.86.107 (talk) 22:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

pronunciation

how to pronounce this letter? West Brom 4ever (talk) 02:09, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

    Its almost impossible to explain the pronounciation of this letter, as the sound is quite distinct.