Ç

Evolution from Visigothic Z to modern Ç.

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

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.

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. Some examples of words with "c"-cedilla are: torçut "twisted", ço "this", braç "arm", falç "sickle", voraç "voracious", caçar "to hunt", llançar "to throw". A well-known word with this character is Barça, a common Catalan diminutive for the c one of Barcelona's football teams, 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 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". 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 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:

• Albanian: the 4th letter of the Albanian alphabet.
• Azerbaijani: the 4th letter of the Azerbaijani alphabet.
• Kurdish: the 4th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet.
• Pashto: the 5th letter of the Pashto Latin alphabet.
• Tatar: the 5th letter of the Tatar alphabet (based on Zamanälif).
• Turkish: the 4th letter of the Turkish alphabet.
• Turkmen: the 3rd letter of the Turkmen alphabet.
• Zazaki: the 4th letter of the Zazaki alphabet.

Computer

For ASCII, type ALT + 128 for majuscule (Ç), and ALT + 135 for minuscule (ç). (Note: these ALT sequences are not a standard encoding, but a way to type these characters in Windows.)

Input

• In Mac OS, "Ç" can be typed using shift + option + c and "ç" can be typed using option + c

• The HTML character entity reference for "Ç" is Ç and ç for "ç".

• 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 using the shortcut key "ALT+0199" as "ç" can be produced using the shortcut key "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

• Cedilla
• Ҹ

References

External links

Look up Ç or ç in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Omniglot - writing systems & languages of the world