Letter from c

c | letter | Britannica

C

See all media

Related Topics:

consonant Roman numeral letter

See all related content →

c, third letter of the alphabet, corresponding to Semitic gimel (which probably derived from an early sign for "camel") and Greek gamma (Γ). A rounded form occurs at Corinth and in the Chalcidic alphabet, and both an angular and a rounded form are found in the early Latin alphabet, as well as in Etruscan. The rounded form survived and became general, and the shape of the letter has since altered little.

Click Here to see full-size tableThe sound represented by the letter in Semitic and in Greek was the voiced velar stop, represented in English by the "hard" g. In the Latin alphabet it came to represent the unvoiced velar stop (indicated in English by k as well as c) and was for some time, it appears, used for both the voiced and unvoiced sounds. This change is in all probability due to the Etruscan alphabet from which the Latin alphabet was derived, for a phonemic distinction between voiced and voiceless stops apparently did not exist in the Etruscan language. An early Latin inscription exists in which the word RECEI (probably an early dative form of rex, "king") occurs, the letter C being still employed to represent the voiced sound. Finally a new symbol G was used for the voiced sound, and C displaced K as the representative of the unvoiced stop.

In modern English the letter represents two separate sounds: (1) the unvoiced velar stop as in the Latin alphabet and (2) the unvoiced sibilant, identical with the sound represented by s in certain positions. The letter represents the sibilant when followed by any of the front vowels, e, i, and y (e.g., in "receive," "cider," "cycle"), and in all other cases (except before h) the velar (e. g., "call," "come," "clear," "crumb," "epic"). This is due to the palatalization of the velar in early medieval times before the front vowel, the stages of sound change being k > ki > tš > ts > s. The letter c was applied by French orthographists in the 12th century to represent the sound ts in English, and this sound developed into the simpler sibilant s. Gradually the use of the letter c to represent the velar before front vowels (for example, in the Middle English cyng) gave way to that of k, ambiguity being thus as far as possible avoided. The c takes the place of s in words such as "mice” and "advice," in which s would represent a voiced sibilant (identical with the sound of z), and in words such as "practice" merely as a means of grammatical distinction.

Before k the letter is often redundant (e.g., in "thick," "clock," etc. ). The combination ch represents an unvoiced palatal affricate (tš), as in "church," except that in words of Greek origin it generally has the sound of k—e.g., in "chorus."

This article was most recently revised and updated by Michael Ray.

the history of the letter ‘C’ « the evolving ultrasaurus

> My five year old son asks:
> Why did they invent the letter C, when it makes the sounds of K and S?

It sure does make it tough to play “I Spy.” In seeking an answer to this question, I first searched google and found Jakob Nielsen Declares the Letter “C” Unusable. A great article, but not exactly what I was looking for. Then I chanced to read danah’s capitalization rules where Andrew Cone had left a link to an interesting discussion.

Only on the internet could I fulfill such random curiosity with such convenience. While waiting for paper mache to dry I submitted the question to the “Ask A Linguist” list.

In case anyone else is curious, I’ve compiled a few highlights from the responses I received….

The short answer

Originally, C spelled the sound /g/. But, with some help from the Etruscans, the Romans got into a bit of a tangle here, and they wound up using C to spell both the sound /g/ and the sound /k/, while they hardly used the letter K at all. Eventually, realizing this was a bad idea, they invented a new letter, G, to spell the sound /g/, and they then used C exclusively to spell the sound /k/.

This was the system borrowed from the Romans by the Anglo-Saxons. Originally C spelled only /k/ in Old English. But then the pronunciation of English changed. (Larry Trask)

Another important consideration

“‘c’ is often used (though not always) for roots whose pronunciation alternates between [s] and [k]. think of ‘public’ vs. ‘publicity’. If we spelled the first ‘publik’ and the second ‘publisity’ we wouldn’t be able to see the relationship between the two words as easily. ” (Susan Fisher)

A longer story
(this might make a good children’s book if it had pictures)

“That’s a very good question, and the answer is that it didn’t always make those sounds. See, the language we speak has changed over the centuries, as all languages do. And writing — which is different from talking, changes too, though much more slowly.

The letter C wasn’t invented for English. It was invented several thousand years ago to write down the sounds of Phoenician, a language related to Hebrew and Arabic. At the time, the letter was called “gamel” or something like that, which means ‘camel’ (see the C?). It represented the G sound (the letter G was invented later, by the Romans).

Later on the Greeks started using the Phoenician alphabet and they used the letter to represent the G sound, too. Not having any camels, they called it “gamma”; the K sound was represented by the letter K, called “kappa”. And later still, people in Italy used it, but they didn’t have a G sound, so they used it for the K sound.

The Romans eventually wound up using this alphabet, with the letter C standing for the K sound, but they did have a G sound, so they put a little jot on the C and made it a G (they didn’t use the letter K, except for words they borrowed from Greek).” (John Lawler)

“In the Norman French era, “C” was pronounced “S” before the letters “I,E,(Y)”, and otherwise “K”, After William the Conquerer captured England in 1066, English borrowed a lot of French words with French spellings, so “C” became a letter with two sounds. English also had words like “king, keep” where /k/ was pronounced before /e,i/, so the Greek letter “K” was reintroduced to keep things straight (more or less).” (Elizabeth J. Pyatt)

Many thanks to those fine linguists who helped me understand the interesting history of the letter C, and it’s relatives K and G:
Susan Fischer, NTID/RIT
John Lawler, U Michigan Linguistics Dept
Herb Stahlke, Ball State University
Larry Trask, University of Sussex
Mike Hammond
Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D., Penn State University
Anthea Fraser GUPTA,University of Leeds

My original question and all follow-up answers are archived at “Ask A Linguist”

I still wonder… how do we know how people pronounced words thousands of years ago? were there ancient linguists who recorded their observations?

What to do if you received a letter from a scammer from your corporate mail

Our technical support periodically receives tickets asking what to do if a letter from a scammer has been sent to the corporate mail. At the same time, the letter came from the client's corporate mail.

Let's take an example. The company uses corporate mail [email protected]. They received a letter from their own mail - [email protected] - with the following content:

Hi!

As you may have noticed, I sent you an email from your account.
This means that I have full access to your account.

I've been watching you for a few months now.
The fact is that you were infected with malware through an adult site that you visited.

If you are not familiar with this, I will explain.
Trojan Virus gives me full access and control over a computer or other device.
This means that I can everything on your screen, turn see on the camera and microphone, but you do not know about it.

I also have access to all your contacts and all your correspondence.

Why did your antivirus not detect malware?
Answer: My malware uses the driver, I update its signatures every 4 hours so that your antivirus is silent.

I made a video showing how you satisfy yourself in the left half of the screen, and in the right half you see the video that you watched.
With one click of the mouse, I can send this video to all your emails and contacts on social networks.
I can also post access to all your e-mail correspondence and messengers that you use.

If you want to prevent this,
transfer the amount of $721 to my bitcoin address (if you do not know how to do this, write to Google: "Buy Bitcoin").

My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is: 1GoWy5yMzh4XXBiYxLU9tKCBMgibpznGio

After receiving the payment, I will delete the video and you will never hear me again.
I give you 48 hours to pay.
I have a notice reading this letter, and the timer will work when you see this letter.

Filing a complaint somewhere does not make sense because this email cannot be tracked like my bitcoin address.
I don't make any mistakes.

If I find that you have shared this message with someone else, the video will be immediately distributed.

Best regards!”