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C

C is the third Letter (alphabet)|letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language|English is spelled '''cee''' or occasionally '''ce''' ()."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 (letter)|gimel. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyphs|Egyptian hieroglyph for a sling (weapon)#Staff sling|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 phonation|voicing, so the Greek language|Greek Gamma|Γ (Gamma) was adopted into the Etruscan alphabet to represent the 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 and , but during the 3rd century BC, a modified character, was introduced for , and C itself retained for . 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 at a very early time, while K might have been used for . Other alphabets have letters identical to C in form but not in use and derivation, in particular the Cyrillic alphabet|Cyrillic letter Es (Cyrillic)|Es which derives from one form of the Greek letter sigma (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 and this value of the letter has been retained in loanwords to all the insular Celtic languages: in Welsh language|Welsh, Irish language|Irish, Scottish Gaelic language|Gaelic, C, c, is still only . The Old English or "Anglo-Saxon language|Anglo-Saxon" writing was learned from the Celts, apparently of Ireland; hence C, c, in Old English, also originally represented : 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, before front vowels ( and ) was palatalization|palatalized, having, by the 10th century, advanced nearly or quite to the sound of , 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 language|Italian). Original Latin before front vowels had palatalized in Italy to the sound of , and in France and the Iberian peninsula to that of . 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 (represented by QV, or ''qu'') de-labialized to meaning that the various Romance languages had before front vowels. In addition, Norman language|Norman used the Greek letter ''K,'' so that the sound could be represented by either ''k'' or ''c,'' the latter of which could represent either or . 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´Image:Insular G.GIF (cé´Image:Insular G.GIF), 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 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 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 de-affricated to ; and from that date c before front vowels has been, phonetically, a duplicate or subsidiary letter to s; used either for etymology|etymological reasons, as in ''lance, cent,'' or (in defiance of etymology) to avoid the ambiguity due to the "etymological" use of s for , 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 ''sence'' for sense. Hence, today the Romance languages and English language|English have a common feature inherited from Vulgar Latin where C takes on either a Hard and soft C|"hard" or "soft" value depending on the following vowel. In English, French language|French and Spanish language|Spanish, C takes the "hard" value 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 "Pronunciation of Celtic|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 . In the Spanish spoken in northern and central Spain it is pronounced as the voiceless dental fricative . In Italian language|Italian and Romanian language|Romanian it is pronounced as . Other languages use C with different values, such as in Fijian language|Fijian; in Somali language|Somali; the click in Xhosa language|Xhosa and Zulu language|Zulu; in Turkish language|Turkish, Kurdish Language|Kurdish; Tatar language|Tatar, and Azeri language|Azeri; in Bahasa Indonesia|Indonesian, Malay language|Malay, Volapük language|Volapük, and a number of African languages such as Hausa language|Hausa, Fula language|Fula, and Manding languages|Manding; in all Balto-Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet, as well as Albanian language|Albanian, Esperanto language|Esperanto, Hungarian language|Hungarian, Ido language|Ido, and Interlingua language|Interlingua; and in Pinyin|Romanized Chinese language|Chinese. It is also used as a transliteration of the Cyrillic "Ц" in the Latinic forms of Serbian alphabet|Serbian, Romanisation of Macedonian|Macedonian, and Romanization of Ukrainian|Ukrainian. There are several common digraphs with C, the most common being Ch (digraph)|CH, which in some languages such as German language|German is far more common than C alone. In English, CH most commonly takes the value (which it invariably has in Spanish language|Spanish), but can take the value or ; some dialects of English also have in words like ''loch'' where other speakers pronounce the final sound as . CH takes various values in other languages, such as in all Slavic languages using the Latin alphabet;, , or in German; or silent in Dutch language|Dutch; in French language|French and Portuguese language|Portuguese; in Interlingua and Italian, in Mandarin Chinese; and so forth. CK, with the value , is often used after short vowels in Germanic languages such as English, German and Swedish language|Swedish (but some other Germanic languages use KK instead, such as Dutch and Norwegian language|Norwegian). The digraph CZ is found in Polish and CS in Hungarian, both representing . In Old English, Italian, and a few languages related to Italian, sc represents (however in Italian and related languages this only happens before e or i, otherwise it represents ). 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

In Unicode the majuscule|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 numeral system|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

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