This grapheme sandwiches the consonant it modifies and changes the syllable's vowel sound from /ɐ/ to /o/.
It is sometimes erroneously transliterated as eā instead of correct o by analogy with diacritics representing e and ā (see above), for example, in Google Translate, കൊല്ലം(kollaṁ, “year”) is transliterated as keāllaṃ. This feature, subtituting o with eā, however, has been inherited from its ancestor script Pallava.[1]
