Ç

Evolution from Visigothic Z to modern Ç.

Ç, ç (c-cedilla) is a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Tatsar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. Romance languages that use this letter include Catalan, French, Friulian, Ligurian, Occitan, and Portuguese as a variant of the letter C. It is also occasionally used in Crimean Tatar and Manx. It is often retained in the spelling of loanwords from any of these languages in English, Dutch, Spanish, Basque and other Latin script spelled languages.

It was first used for the sound of the voiceless alveolar affricate /t͡s/ in Old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter z (Ꝣ). The phoneme originated in Vulgar Latin from the palatalization of the plosives /t/ and /k/ in some conditions. Later, /t͡s/ changed into /s/ in many Romance languages and dialects. Spanish has not used the symbol since an orthographic reform in the 18th century (which replaced ç with the now-devoiced z), 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

Unless otherwise specified, in the following languages, ç 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):

• 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 ç are amenaça "menace", torçat "twisted", xoriço "chorizo", forçut "strong", dolç "sweet" and caça "hunting". A well-known word with this character is Barça, a common Catalan diminutive for FC Barcelona, also used across the world, including the Spanish-language media.
• French (cé cédille): français "French", garçon "boy", façade "frontage", grinçant "squeaking", leçon "lesson", reçu "received" (past participle). French does not use the character at the end of a word but it can occur at the beginning of a word (ça "that").^[1]
• Friulian (c cun cedilie): it represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ before a, o, u or at the end of a word.
• Occitan (ce cedilha): torçut "twisted", çò "this", ça que la "nevertheless", braç "arm", brèç "cradle", voraç "voracious". It can occur at the beginning of a word.
• Portuguese (cê cedilhado or cê-cedilha): it is used before a, o, or u: taça "cup", braço "arm", açúcar "sugar". Modern Portuguese never uses the character at the beginning or at the end of a word (the nickname for Conceição is São, not Ção).
• Manx: it is used in the digraph çh, pronounced [t͡ʃ], to differentiate it from normal ch, pronounced [x].

In loanwords only

• In English and Basque, ç (known as ze hautsia in Basque) is used in loanwords such as façade and limaçon (although normally, the cedilla mark is dropped in English: facade). In modern Spanish it can appear in loanwords, especially in Catalan proper nouns.
• In Dutch, it can be found in some words from French and Portuguese, such as façade, reçu, Provençaals and Curaçao.

Usage as a separate letter in various languages

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

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

It previously represented a voiceless palatal click /ǂ/ in Juǀʼhoansi and Naro, though the former has replaced it with ⟨ǂ⟩ and the latter with ⟨tc⟩.

A similarly shaped letter is used in the Cyrillic alphabets of Bashkir and Chuvash to represent /θ/ and /ɕ/ respectively.

Computer

Input

On Albanian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish and Italian keyboards, Ç is directly available as a separate key; however, on most other keyboards, including the US/British keyboard, a combination of keys must be used:

• In the US-International keyboard layout, these are ' followed by either C or ⇧ Shift+C. Alternatively one may press AltGr+, or AltGr+⇧ Shift+,.
• In classic Mac OS and macOS, these are ⌥ Opt+C and ⌥ Opt+⇧ Shift+C for lower and upper case, respectively.
• In the X Window System and many Unix consoles, one presses sequentially Compose, , and either C or ⇧ Shift+C. Alternatively, one may press AltGr+= and then either C or ⇧ Shift+C.
• In Microsoft Windows, these are Alt+0231 or Alt+135 for lower case and Alt+0199 or Alt+128 for upper case.
• In Microsoft Word, these are Ctrl+, and then either C or ⇧ Shift+C.
• The HTML character entity references are ç and Ç for lower and upper case, respectively.
• In TeX and LaTeX, \c is used for adding the cedilla accent to a letter, so \c{c} produces "ç".

See also

• Cedilla
• Ҹ

References

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