C

C
C c
Usage
Writing system	Latin language
Phonetic usage	[ 𐌂 C c
Sisters	Г G Գ գ 𐡂 ࠂ ג ܓ ج
Other
Associated numbers	100
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

ISO basic Latin alphabet
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz
v t e

C, or c, is the third letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is cee (pronounced /ˈsiː/), plural cees.^[1]

History

Egyptian	Phoenician gaml	Western Greek Gamma	Etruscan C	Old Latin C (G)	Latin C

"C" comes from the same letter as "G". The

Western Greek alphabet, Gamma first took a '' form in Early Etruscan, then '' in Classical Etruscan. In Latin it eventually took the 'c' form in Classical Latin. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters 'c k q' were used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, 'q' was used to represent /k/ or /ɡ/ before a rounded vowel, 'k' before 'a', and 'c' elsewhere.^[3]

In Vulgar Latin, /k/ became palatalized to [tʃ] in Italy and Dalmatia; in France and the Iberian peninsula, it became [ts]. Yet for these new sounds ⟨c⟩ was still used before the letters ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩. The letter thus represented two distinct values. Subsequently, the Latin phoneme /k^w/ (spelled ⟨qv⟩) de-labialized to /k/ meaning that the various Romance languages had /k/ before front vowels. In addition, Norman used the letter ⟨k⟩ so that the sound /k/ could be represented by either ⟨k⟩ or ⟨c⟩, the latter of which could represent either /k/ or /ts/ depending on whether it preceded a front vowel letter or not. The convention of using both ⟨c⟩ and ⟨k⟩ was applied to the writing of English after the Norman Conquest, causing a considerable re-spelling of the Old English words. Thus while Old English candel, clif, corn, crop, cú, remained unchanged, Cent, cǣᵹ (cēᵹ), cyng, brece, sēoce, were now (without any change of sound) spelled Kent, keȝ, kyng, breke, and seoke; even cniht ('knight') was subsequently changed to kniht and þic ('thick') changed to thik or thikk. The Old English ⟨cw⟩ was also at length displaced by the French ⟨qu⟩ so that the Old English cwēn ('queen') and cwic ('quick') became Middle English quen and quik, respectively. The sound [tʃ], to which Old English palatalized /k/ had advanced, also occurred in French, chiefly from Latin /k/ before ⟨a⟩. In French it was represented by the digraph ⟨ch⟩, as in champ (from Latin camp-um) and this spelling was introduced into English: the Hatton Gospels, written c. 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 way to ⟨k⟩, ⟨qu⟩ and ⟨ch⟩; on the other hand, ⟨c⟩ in its new value of /ts/ appeared largely in French words like processiun, emperice and 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 thirteenth century both in France and England, this sound /ts/ de-affricated to /s/; and from that time ⟨c⟩ has represented /s/ before front vowels either for etymological reasons, as in lance, cent, or to avoid the ambiguity due to the "etymological" use of ⟨s⟩ for /z/, as in ace, mice, once, pence, defence.

Thus, to show etymology, English spelling has advise, devise (instead of *advize, *devize), 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 reason for using ⟨c⟩. Former generations also wrote sence for sense. Hence, today the Romance languages and English have a common feature inherited from Vulgar Latin spelling conventions where ⟨c⟩ takes on either a "hard" or "soft" value depending on the following letter.

Use in writing systems

English

In

The "soft" ⟨c⟩ may represent the /ʃ/ sound in the digraph ⟨ci⟩ when this precedes a vowel, as in the words 'delicious' and 'appreciate', and also in the word "ocean" and its derivatives.

The digraph ⟨

The digraph ⟨ck⟩ is often used to represent the sound /k/ after short vowels, like "wicket".

C is the twelfth most frequently used letter in the English language (after E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L), with a frequency of about 2.8% in words.

Other languages

In the Romance languages French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese, ⟨c⟩ generally has a "hard" value of /k/ and a "soft" value whose pronunciation varies by language. In French, Portuguese, Catalan and Spanish from Latin America and some places in Spain, the soft ⟨c⟩ value is /s/ as it is in English. In the Spanish spoken in most of Spain, the soft ⟨c⟩ is a voiceless dental fricative /θ/. In Italian and Romanian, the soft ⟨c⟩ is [t͡ʃ].

Germanic languages usually use ⟨c⟩ for Romance loans or digraphs, such as ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨ck⟩, but the rules vary across languages. Of all the Germanic languages, only English uses initial ⟨c⟩ in native Germanic words like come. Other than English,

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. ⟨ch⟩ takes various values in other languages.

As in English, ⟨ck⟩, with the value /k/, is often used after short vowels in other Germanic languages such as German and Swedish (other Germanic languages, such as Dutch and Norwegian, use ⟨kk⟩ instead). The digraph ⟨cz⟩ is found in Polish and ⟨cs⟩ in Hungarian, representing /t͡ʂ/ and /t͡ʃ/ respectively. The digraph ⟨sc⟩ represents /ʃ/ in Old English, Italian, and a few languages related to Italian (where this only happens before front vowels, while otherwise it represents /sk/). The trigraph ⟨sch⟩ represents /ʃ/ in German.

Other uses

• In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, C is a number that corresponds to the number 12 in decimal (base 10) counting.
• In the
  Roman numeral
  system, C represents 100.
• Unit prefix c, meaning one hundredth.

Related characters

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

• 𐤂 : Semitic letter Gimel, from which the following symbols originally derive
  • Γ γ : Greek letter Gamma, from which C derives
    • G g : Latin letter G, which is derived from Latin C
      • Ȝ ȝ : Latin letter
        Ȝ
        , which is derived from Latin G
• Phonetic alphabet symbols related to C:
  • ɕ : Small c with curl
  • ʗ :
    Stretched c
  • 𝼏 :
    Stretched c with curl - Used by Douglas Beach for a nasal click in his phonetic description of Khoekhoe^[5]
  • 𝼝 : Small letter c with retroflex hook - Para-IPA version of the IPA retroflex tʂ^[6]
  • ꟲ : Modifier letter capital c - Used to mark tone for the Chatino orthography in Oaxaca, Mexico; Used as a generic transcription for a falling tone; Used in para-IPA notation^[7]
• ᶜ : Modifier letter small c^[8]
• ᶝ : Modifier letter small c with curl^[8]
• ᴄ : Small capital c is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.^[9]
• Ꞔ ꞔ : C with palatal hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of pinyin romanization during the mid-1950s^[10]

Add to C with diacritics

• C with
  Ꞓ ꞓ
• Ↄ ↄ : Claudian letters^[11]

Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols

• © :
  copyright symbol
• ℃ :
  degree Celsius
• ¢ :
  cent
• ₡ :
  colón (currency)
• ₢ :
  Brazilian cruzeiro (currency)
• ₵ :
  Ghana cedi (currency)
• ₠ : European Currency Unit CE
• ${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} }$ : blackboard bold C, denoting the complex numbers
• ℭ :
  blackletter C
• Ꜿ ꜿ : Medieval abbreviation for Latin syllables con- and com-, Portuguese -us and -os^[12]

Other representations

Computing

The Latin letters ⟨C⟩ and ⟨c⟩ have

Variant forms of the letter have unique code points for specialist use: the

.

Other

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Charlie	▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ⓘ

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling )	Braille dots-14 Unified English Braille

See also

• Hard and soft C
• Speed of light, c

References

External links

Wikisource has the text of the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.) article C.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "C".

• Media related to C at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of C at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of c at Wiktionary