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Ç

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Evolution from Visigothic Z to modern Ç.

Ç, ç (c-cedilla) is a letter in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Kurdish (strictly Kurmanji dialect), Ligurian, Ódär, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan, English and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”. It is also occasionally used in Crimean Tatar, Chuvash, and Manx.

It was first used for the sound of the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/ in old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter "z". This phoneme originated in Vulgar Latin from the palatalization of the plosives /t/ and /k/ in some conditions. Later, /ts/ changed into /s/ in many Romance languages and dialects. Spanish has not used this symbol since an orthographic reform in the 18th century, but it was adopted for writing other languages.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /ç/ represents the voiceless palatal fricative.

In transliteration of the Indic scripts, ç represents the aspirated voiceless postalveolar affricate: /t͡ʃʰ/.

Usage as a letter variant in various languages

It represents the "soft" sound /s/ where a "c" would normally represent the "hard" sound /k/ (before "a", "o", "u", or at the end of a word), in the following languages:

  • Catalan. Known as ce trencada (that is, "broken C") in this language, where it can be used before "a", "o", "u", or at the end of a word. Some examples of words with "c"-cedilla are: amenaça "menace", torçat "twisted", xoriço "chorizo", forçut "strong", dolç "sweet", caça "hunting". A well-known word with this character is Barça, a common Catalan diminutive for FC Barcelona, also used across the world, including by the Spanish-language media.
  • French (cé cédille). Examples: français "French", garçon "boy", grinçant "squeaking", leçon "lesson", reçu "received" (past participle). French uses this character at the beginning of a word (ça "that"), but not at the end.[1] In French comic books that are hand-lettered in all-capitals, the cedilla is written as a slash crossing the center of the lower hook of the letter "C", at the angle of an acute accent. Also, the "ç" is used only in front of a, o and u letters. It is not needed in front of e, i or y (The letter "c" denotes the unvoiced /s/ in front of e, i and y).
  • Friulian (c cun cedilie). It represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/ before "a", "o", "u" or at the end of a word.
  • Occitan (ce cedilha). Examples: torçut "twisted", çò "this", ça que la "nevertheless", braç "arm", brèç "cradle", voraç "voracious".
  • Portuguese (cê cedilhado or cê-cedilha). Denotes unvoiced /s/ before "a", "o", or "u". Examples: taça "cup", braço "arm", açúcar "sugar", coração "heart", pinça "pincers", maçã "apple". Modern Portuguese never uses this character at the beginning or at the end of a word (e.g., the pet-name for Conceição is São, not "Ção"), nor before "e" or "i" (in this case, "c" denotes the unvoiced /s/).
  • Before the 19th century it also occurred for similar purposes in Basque and Spanish.
  • In English ç is used in loanwords like façade
  • In Manx it is used in the digraph "çh", pronounced [tʃ], to differentiate it from normal "ch", pronounced [x].

Usage as a separate letter in various languages

It represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/ in the following languages:

A letter that is identical to the C-cedilla is used in the Bashkir language's Cyrillic alphabet as the /θ/ sound.

Computer

Charset Unicode ISO 8859-1, 2, 3, 9, 14, 15, 16
Majuscule Ç U+00C7 C7
Minuscule ç U+00E7 E7

Input

  • In Mac OS, "Ç" can be typed using shift + option + c and "ç" can be typed using option + c
  • In TeX and LaTeX, \c is used for adding the cedilla accent to a letter, so \c{c} produces "ç".
  • In Microsoft Windows, "Ç" can be produced by typing "ALT+0199" or ALT+128, and "ç" can be produced by typing "ALT+0231", or "ALT+135".
  • In Microsoft Word, "Ç" can be typed using CTRL + "," and then pressing C, and "ç" can be typed using CTRL + "," and then pressing c.
  • In the X Window System and many Unix consoles the compose key combination for "Ç" is COMPOSE "," "C" and for "ç" is COMPOSE "," "c" pressed sequentially. Using Alt-GR the combination is Alt-GR + "=", then C or c respectively for Ç or ç.

See also

References

  1. ^ The French Academy online dictionary also gives çà and çûdra.
Look up Ç or ç in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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