C

C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cee or occasionally ce (pronEng|siː). ["C" "Oxford English Dictionary," 2nd edition (1989); "Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged" (1993); "cee," op. cit.]

History

C comes from the same letter as G or g. The Semites named it gimel. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph for a staff sling, which may have been the meaning of the name "gimel". Another possibility is that it depicted a camel, the Semitic name for which was "gamal".

In the Etruscan language, plosive consonants had no contrastive voicing, so the Greek Γ (Gamma) was adopted into the Etruscan alphabet to represent the IPA|/k/ phoneme. Already in the Western Greek alphabet, Gamma first took a form in Early Etruscan, then in Classical Etruscan. In Early Latin it took a form then C in Classical Latin. Early Latin used C for both IPA|/k/ and IPA|/g/, but during the 3rd century BC, a modified character was introduced for IPA|/g/, and C itself retained for IPA|/k/. Hence, in the classical period and after, G was treated as the phonetic representative of "gamma", and C as the equivalent of "kappa", in the transliteration of Greek words into Roman spelling, as in "KA∆MOΣ, KYPOΣ, ΦΩKIΣ," in Roman letters "CADMVS, CYRVS, PHOCIS". It is also possible but uncertain that C represented only IPA|/g/ at a very early time, while K might have been used for IPA|/k/.

Other alphabets have letters identical to C in form but not in use and derivation, in particular the Cyrillic letter Es which derives from one form of the Greek letter sigma, known as the "lunate sigma" due to its resemblance to the crescent moon.

Later use

When the Roman alphabet was introduced into Britain, C represented only IPA|/k/ and this value of the letter has been retained in loanwords to all the insular Celtic languages: in Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, C, c, is still only IPA|/k/. The Old English or "Anglo-Saxon" writing was learned from the Celts, apparently of Ireland; hence C, c, in Old English, also originally represented IPA|/k/: the words "kin, break, broken, thick, seek," were in Old English written "cyn, brecan, brocen, Þicc, séoc". But during the course of the Old English period, IPA|/k/ before front vowels (IPA|/e/ and IPA|/i/) was palatalized, having, by the 10th century, advanced nearly or quite to the sound of IPA|/tʃ/, though still written c, as in "cir(i)ce, wrecc(e)a". On the continent, meanwhile, a similar phonetic change had also been going on (for example, in Italian).

Original Latin IPA|/k/ before front vowels had palatalized in Italy to the sound of IPA|/tʃ/, and in France and the Iberian peninsula to that of IPA|/ts/. Yet for these new sounds the old character C, c, was still retained before "e" and "i," the letter thus represented two distinct values. Moreover the Latin phoneme IPA|/kʷ/ (represented by QV, or "qu") de-labialized to IPA|/k/ meaning that the various Romance languages had IPA|/k/ before front vowels. In addition, Norman used the Greek letter "K," so that the sound IPA|/k/ could be represented by either "k" or "c," the latter of which could represent either IPA|/k/ or IPA|/ts/. These French inconsistencies as to C and K were, after the Norman Conquest, applied to the writing of English, which caused a considerable re-spelling of the Old English words. Thus while Old English "candel, clif, corn, crop, cú," remained unchanged, "Cent, cæ´ (cé´), cyng, brece, séoce," were now (without any change of sound) spelt "Kent, keȝ, kyng, breke, seoke;" even "cniht" was subsequently spelt "kniht, knight," and "þic, þicc," became "thik, thikk, thick". The Old English cw- was also at length (very unnecessarily) displaced by the French "qw, qu," so that the Old English "cwén, cwic," became Middle English "qwen, quen, qwik, quik," now "queen, quick". The sound IPA|/tʃ/ to which Old English palatalized c had advanced, also occurred in French, chiefly (in Central French) from Latin "c" before "a". In French it was represented by "ch," as in "champ, cher:"–Latin "camp-um, caōr-um; " and this spelling was now introduced into English: the Hatton Gospels, written about 1160, have in Matt. i-iii, "child, chyld, riche, mychel," for the "cild, rice, mycel," of the Old English version whence they were copied. In these cases, the Old English "c" gave place to "k, qu, ch;" but, on the other hand, "c" in its new value of IPA|/ts/ came in largely in French words like "processiun, emperice, grace," and was also substituted for "ts" in a few Old English words, as "miltse, bletsien," in early Middle English "milce, blecien". By the end of the 13th century both in France and England, this sound IPA|/ts/ de-affricated to IPA|/s/; and from that date c before front vowels has been, phonetically, a duplicate or subsidiary letter to s; used either for etymological reasons, as in "lance, cent," or (in defiance of etymology) to avoid the ambiguity due to the "etymological" use of s for IPA|/z/, as in "ace, mice, once, pence, defence".

Thus, to show the etymology, English spelling has "advise, devise," instead of "advize, devize," which while "advice, device, dice, ice, mice, twice," etc., do not reflect etymology; example has extended this to "hence, pence, defence," etc., where there is no etymological necessity for "c". Former generations also wrote " _en. sence" for sense.

Hence, today the Romance languages and English have a common feature inherited from Vulgar Latin where C takes on either a "hard" or "soft" value depending on the following vowel.

In English, French and Spanish, C takes the "hard" value IPA|/k/ finally and before A, O, and U, and a "soft" value before E and I. However, as with everything else regarding English spelling, there are a couple of exceptions: "soccer" and "Celt" are words that have a "k" sound in the "wrong" place.

The pronunciation of the "soft" value varies by language. In English, French, and Spanish from Latin America and southern Spain, C before E and I sounds IPA|/s/. In the Spanish spoken in northern and central Spain it is pronounced as the voiceless dental fricative IPA|/θ/. In Italian and Romanian it is pronounced as IPA|/ʧ/.

Other languages use C with different values, such as IPA|/ð/ in Fijian; IPA|/ʕ/ in Somali; the click IPA|/ǀ/ in Xhosa and Zulu; IPA|/ʤ/ in Turkish, Kurdish; Tatar, and Azeri; IPA|/ʧ/ in Indonesian, Malay, Volapük, and a number of African languages such as Hausa, Fula, and Manding; IPA|/ʦ/ in all Balto-Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet, as well as Albanian, Esperanto, Hungarian, Ido, and Interlingua; and IPA|/ʦʰ/ in Romanized Chinese. It is also used as a transliteration of the Cyrillic "Ц" in the Latinic forms of Serbian, Macedonian, and Ukrainian.

There are several common digraphs with C, the most common being CH, which in some languages such as German is far more common than C alone. In English, CH most commonly takes the value IPA|/ʧ/ (which it invariably has in Spanish), but can take the value IPA|/k/ or IPA|/ʃ/; some dialects of English also have IPA|/x/ in words like "loch" where other speakers pronounce the final sound as IPA|/k/. CH takes various values in other languages, such as IPA|/x/ in all Slavic languages using the Latin alphabet;IPA|/ç/, IPA|/k/, or IPA|/x/ in German; IPA|/x/ or silent in Dutch; IPA|/ʃ/ in French and Portuguese; IPA|/k/ in Interlingua and Italian, IPA|/ʈʂʰ/ in Mandarin Chinese; and so forth. CK, with the value IPA|/k/, is often used after short vowels in Germanic languages such as English, German and Swedish (but some other Germanic languages use KK instead, such as Dutch and Norwegian). The digraph CZ is found in Polish and CS in Hungarian, both representing IPA|/ʧ/. In Old English, Italian, and a few languages related to Italian, sc represents IPA|/ʃ/ (however in Italian and related languages this only happens before e or i, otherwise it represents IPA|/sk/).

As a phonetic symbol, lowercase c is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and X-SAMPA symbol for the voiceless palatal plosive, and capital C is the X-SAMPA symbol for the voiceless palatal fricative.

Codes for computing

Letter
NATO=Charlie
Morse=–·–·
Character=C3
Braille=⠉In Unicode the capital C is codepoint U+0043 and the lowercase c is U+0063.

The ASCII code for capital C is 67 and for lowercase c is 99; or in binary 01000011 and 01100011, respectively.

The EBCDIC code for capital C is 195 and for lowercase c is 131.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "C" and "c" for upper and lower case respectively.

References

ee also

*¢ (cent)
*Ç (cedilla)
*Ĉ (C circumflex)
*Č (C caron)
*Ć (C acute)
*Cyrillic C (Es). С, с are identical in shape with the Latin C,c but are equivalents of the Latin S, s.
*Ц, ц - Tse (Cyrillic)
*Ċ (C dot above)
*Unicode|Ƈ (C hook)
*Unicode|ʗ (stretched C)
*Unicode|Ḉ (C acute cedilla)
*Unicode|₡ (colon currency symbol)
*Unicode|₢ (cruzeiro currency symbol)
*Unicode|ℂ (double-struck C)
*℃ (degree Celsius)
*Unicode|ℭ (Gothic C)
*Unicode|Ⅽ (Roman number C)
*Hard and soft C

af:C
als:C
ar:C
arc:C
ast:C
az:C
zh-min-nan:C
bs:C
bg:C
ca:C
cs:C
co:C
cy:C
da:C
de:C
et:C
el:C
es:C
eo:C
eu:C
fa:C
fur:C
ga:C
gd:C
gl:C
gan:C
ko:C
hr:C
io:C
ilo:C
it:C
he:C
ka:C
kw:C
sw:C
ht:C
la:C
lv:C
lb:C
lt:C
hu:C
ms:C
nah:C
ja:C
no:C
nn:C
nrm:C
oc:C
pl:C
pt:C
crh:C
ro:C
qu:C
se:C
scn:C
simple:C
sk:C
sl:C
fi:C
szl:C
sv:C
tl:C
th:C
vi:C
tw:C
vo:C
wuu:C
yi:C
yo:C
zh-yue:C
bat-smg:C
zh:C