C

C or c is the third letter of the Latin

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

History

Usage
Writing Latin script
system
Type Alphabetic
Language of Latin language
origin
Sound [c] [k] [tʃ]͡ ͡
[ts(ʰ)]
values ͡
[dʒ] [ʃ] [s]̝ [ʕ]
[ʔ] [θ] others
In Unicode U+0043, U+0063
Alphabetical 3
position Numerical value: 100
History
Development

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 Γγ
!
Cc

Sisters Г G Գգ !
ࠂ ‫ג‬ ‫ܓ‬ ‫ج‬
Other
Associated 100
numbers

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

C in copyright
"C" comes from the same letter as "G". The Semites named it gimel. symbol
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. Barry B. Powell, a specialist in
the history of writing, states "It is hard to imagine how gimel = "camel" can be derived
from the picture of a camel (it may show his hump, or his head and neck!)".[2]

In the Etruscan language, plosive consonants had no contrastive voicing, so the Greek
'Γ' (Gamma) was adopted into the Etruscan alphabet to represent /k/. Already in 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] During the 3rd century
BC, a modified character was introduced for /ɡ/, and 'C' itself was retained for /k/. The
use of 'C' (and its variant 'G') replaced most usages of 'K' and 'Q'. Hence, in the classical
period and after, 'G' was treated as the equivalent of Greek gamma, and 'C' as the
equivalent of kappa; this shows in the romanization of Greek words, as in 'ΚΑΔΜΟΣ',
'ΚΥΡΟΣ', and 'ΦΩΚΙΣ' came into Latin as 'CADMVS', 'CYRVS' and 'PHOCIS', respectively.

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 Other alphabets have letters homoglyphic to 'c' but not analogous in use and derivation,
like the Cyrillic letter Es (С, с) which derives from the lunate sigma.

Later use
When the Roman alphabet was introduced into Britain, ⟨c⟩ represented only /k/, and
this value of the letter has been retained in loanwords to all the insular Celtic languages:
in Welsh,[4] Irish, and Gaelic, ⟨c⟩ represents only /k/. The Old English Latin-based
writing system was learned from the Celts, apparently of Ireland; hence, ⟨c⟩ in Old
English also originally represented /k/; the Modern English words kin, break, broken,
thick, and seek all come from Old English words written with ⟨c⟩: cyn, brecan, brocen,
þicc, and séoc. However, during the course of the Old English period, /k/ before front
vowels (/e/ and /i/) was palatalized, having changed by the tenth century to [tʃ], though
⟨c⟩ was still used, as in cir(i)ce, wrecc(e)a. On the continent, meanwhile, a similar
phonetic change before the same two vowels had also been going on in almost all
modern romance languages (for example, in Italian).

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 /kw/ (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, and cú, remained unchanged, cent, cǣᵹ (cēᵹ),
cyng, brece, and 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') was 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, and mychel,
for the cild, rice, and 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

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 and England, this sound /ts/ was 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

Pronunciation of ⟨c⟩ by language

Orthography Phonemes Environment

Albanian /ts/

Cypriot Arabic /ʕ/

Azeri /dʒ/

Berber /ʃ/

Bukawa /ʔ/

/k/ Except before e, i

Catalan
/s/ Before e, i

Standard Chinese (Pinyin) /tsʰ/

Crimean Tatar /dʒ/

Cornish
/s/
(Standard Written Form)

Czech /ts/

/k/ Except before e, i, y, æ, ø

Danish
/s/ Before e, i, y, æ, ø

/k/ Except before e, i, y

Dutch /s/ Before e, i, y

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 /tʃ/ Before e, i in loanwords from Italian

/k/ Except before e, i, y

English /s/ Before e, i, y

/ʃ/ Before ea, ia, ie, io, iu

Esperanto /ts/

Fijian /ð/

/k/ Except before e, i

Filipino
/s/ Before e, i

/k/ Except before e, i, y

French
/s/ Before e, i, y

Fula /tʃ/

Gagauz /dʒ/

/k/ Except before e, i

Galician
/θ/ or /s/ Before e, i

Except before ä, e, i, ö, ü, y in loanwords

/k/
and names
German
Before ä, e, i, ö, ü, y in loanwords and
/ts/
names

Hausa /tʃ/

Hungarian /ts/

Indonesian /tʃ/

/k/ Except before e, i; or after i

Irish
/c/ Before e, i; or after i

/k/ Except before e, i

Italian
/tʃ/ Before e, i

Khmer (ALA-LC) /c/

Kurmanji (Hawar) /dʒ/

/k/ (and /g/ in early

Latin
Latin)

Latvian /ts/

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 Malay /tʃ/

Manding /tʃ/

Except before e, i, y, æ, ø in loanwords

/k/
and names
Norwegian
Before e, i, y, æ, ø in loanwords and
/s/
names

/ts/ Except before i

Polish
/t / Before i

/k/ Except before e, i, y

Portuguese
/s/ Before e, i, y

/k/ Except before e, i

Romanian
/tʃ/ Before e, i

/k/ Except before e, i

Romansh
/ts/ Before e, i

/kʰ/ Except before e, i; or after i

Scottish Gaelic
/kʰʲ/ Before e, i; or after i

Serbo-Croatian /ts/

Slovak /ts/

Slovene /ts/

Somali /ʕ/

/k/ Except before e, i, y

Spanish
/θ/ or /s/ Before e, i, y

/k/ Except before e, i, y, ä, ö

Swedish
/s/ Before e, i, y, ä, ö

Tajik /tʃ/

Tatar / /

Turkish /dʒ/

/k/ Except before e, i

Valencian
/s/ Before e, i

/k/ Except word-finally

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 Vietnamese
/k /̚ Word-finally

Welsh /k/

Xhosa /ǀ/

Yabem /ʔ/

Yup'ik /tʃ/

Zulu /ǀ/

English
In English orthography, ⟨c⟩ generally represents the "soft" value of /s/ before the letters
⟨e⟩ (including the Latin-derived digraphs ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩, or the corresponding ligatures
⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩), ⟨i⟩, and ⟨y⟩, and a "hard" value of /k/ before any other letters or at the end
of a word. However, there are a number of exceptions in English: "soccer", "celt" and
"sceptic" are words that have /k/ where /s/ would be expected. 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 ⟨ch⟩ most commonly represents /tʃ/, but can also represent /k/ (mainly in
words of Greek origin) or /ʃ/ (mainly in words of French origin). For some dialects of
English, it may also represent /x/ in words like loch, while other speakers pronounce the
final sound as /k/. The trigraph ⟨tch⟩ always represents /tʃ/. The digraph ⟨ck⟩ is often
used to represent the sound /k/ after short vowels, like in "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 [t͡ ʃ].

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 the initial ⟨c⟩ in native Germanic words like come. Other than English, Dutch uses
⟨c⟩ the most, for most Romance loans and the digraph ⟨ch⟩. German uses ⟨c⟩ in the
digraphs ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨ck⟩, and the trigraph ⟨sch⟩, but by itself only in unassimilated

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 loanwords and proper names. Danish keeps soft ⟨c⟩ in Romance words but changes hard
⟨c⟩ to ⟨k⟩. Swedish has the same rules for soft and hard ⟨c⟩ as Danish, and also uses ⟨c⟩ in
the digraph ⟨ck⟩ and the very common word och, "and". Norwegian, Afrikaans, and
Icelandic are the most restrictive, replacing all cases of ⟨c⟩ with ⟨k⟩ or ⟨s⟩, and reserving
⟨c⟩ for unassimilated loanwords and names.

All Balto-Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet, as well as Albanian, Hungarian,
Pashto, several Sami languages, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, and Americanist phonetic
notation (and those aboriginal languages of North America whose practical orthography
derives from it), use ⟨c⟩ to represent /t͡ s/, the voiceless alveolar or voiceless dental
sibilant affricate. In Hanyu Pinyin, the standard romanization of Mandarin Chinese, the
letter represents an aspirated version of this sound, /t͡ sh/.

Among non-European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet, ⟨c⟩ represents a
variety of sounds. Yup'ik, Indonesian, Malay, and a number of African languages such as
Hausa, Fula, and Manding share the soft Italian value of /t͡ ʃ/. In Azeri, Crimean Tatar,
Kurmanji Kurdish, and Turkish, ⟨c⟩ stands for the voiced counterpart of this sound, the
voiced postalveolar affricate /d͡ ʒ/. In Yabem and similar languages, such as Bukawa, ⟨c⟩
stands for a glottal stop /ʔ/. Xhosa and Zulu use this letter to represent the click /ǀ/. In
some other African languages, such as Berber languages, ⟨c⟩ is used for /ʃ/. In Fijian, ⟨c⟩
stands for a voiced dental fricative /ð/, while in Somali it has the value of /ʕ/.

The letter ⟨c⟩ is also used as a transliteration of Cyrillic ⟨ц⟩ in the Latin forms of Serbian,
Macedonian, and sometimes Ukrainian, along with the digraph ⟨ts⟩.

Other systems
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.

Digraphs
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 /t͡ ʂ/ and /t͡ ʃ/ 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.

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 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

! : 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: A curled C in the coat of
arms of Porvoo
: Small c with curl
ʗ : Stretched c
: Stretched c with curl – Used by Douglas Beach for a nasal click in his
phonetic description of Khoekhoe.[5]
: Small letter c with retroflex hook – Para-IPA version of the IPA retroflex t .[6]
: Modifier letter capital c – Used to mark tone for the Chatino orthography in
Oaxaca, Mexico; used as a generic transcription for a falling tone; also 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]
: 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 diacritics: Ć ć Ĉ ĉ Č č Ċ ċ Ḉ ḉ Ƈ ƈ C̈ c̈ Ȼ ȼ Ç ç Ꞓ

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 Ↄ ↄ : Claudian letters[11]

Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols

© : copyright symbol
°C : degree Celsius
¢ : cent
₡ : colón (currency)
₢ : Brazilian cruzeiro (currency)
₵ : Ghana cedi (currency)
₠ : European Currency Unit CE
: blackboard bold C, denoting the complex numbers
ℭ : blackletter C
: Medieval abbreviation for Latin syllables con- and com-, and Portuguese -us
and -os.[12]

Other representations

Computing
The Latin letters ⟨C⟩ and ⟨c⟩ have Unicode encodings U+0043 C LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C
and U+0063 c LATIN SMALL LETTER C. These are the same code points as those used in
ASCII and ISO 8859. There are also precomposed character encodings for ⟨C⟩ and ⟨c⟩
with diacritics, for most of those listed above; the remainder are produced using
combining diacritics.

Variant forms of the letter have unique code points for specialist use: the alphanumeric
symbols set in mathematics and science, voiceless palatal sounds in linguistics, and
halfwidth and fullwidth forms for legacy CJK font compatibility. The Cyrillic homoglyph
of the Latin ⟨C⟩ has a separate encoding: U+0421 С CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ES.

Other
NATO phonetic Morse code

Charlie ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄

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

See also
Hard and soft C
Speed of light, c

References
1. "C" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New
International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "cee", op. cit.
2. Powell, Barry B. (March 27, 2009). Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of
Civilization (https://books.google.com/books?id=PZ2Gr3d9X2UC&q=Gimel+shaped
+like+a+camel%27s+neck&pg=PA182). Wiley Blackwell. p. 182. ISBN 978-
1405162562.
3. Sihler, Andrew L. (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (https://bo
oks.google.com/books?id=IeHmqKY2BqoC) (illustrated ed.). New York: Oxford
University Press. p. 21. ISBN 0-19-508345-8.
4. "Reading Middle Welsh -- 29 Medieval Spelling" (https://www.mit.edu/people/dfm/ca
nol/chap29.html). www.mit.edu. Retrieved November 19, 2019.
5. Miller, Kirk; Sands, Bonny (July 10, 2020). "L2/20-115R: Unicode request for
additional phonetic click letters" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20115r-click-lett
ers.pdf) (PDF).
6. Miller, Kirk (January 11, 2021). "L2/21-041: Unicode request for additional para-IPA
letters" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21041-add-para-ipa-ltr.pdf) (PDF).
7. Miller, Kirk; Cornelius, Craig (September 25, 2020). "L2/20-251: Unicode request for
modifier Latin capital letters" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20251-mod-latin.pd
f) (PDF).
8. Constable, Peter (April 19, 2004). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic
characters to the UCS" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04132-n2740-phonetic.p
df) (PDF).
9. Everson, Michael; et al. (March 20, 2002). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet
characters for the UCS" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2002/02141-n2419-uralic-pho

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 characters for the UCS" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2002/02141-n2419-uralic-pho
netic.pdf) (PDF).
10. West, Andrew; Chan, Eiso; Everson, Michael (January 16, 2017). "L2/17-013:
Proposal to encode three uppercase Latin letters used in early Pinyin" (https://www.
unicode.org/L2/L2017/17013-n4782-latin.pdf) (PDF).
11. Everson, Michael (August 12, 2005). "L2/05-193R2: Proposal to add Claudian Latin
letters to the UCS" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2005/05193r2-n2960r2-claudian.pd
f) (PDF).
12. Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd
Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (January
30, 2006). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (https://w
ww.unicode.org/L2/L2006/06027-n3027-medieval.pdf) (PDF).

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

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