text stringlengths 0 39.7k |
|---|
The dictionary definition of c at Wiktionary |
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 ), plural cees. |
"C" comes from the same letter as "G". The Semites named it gimel. 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 hi... |
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 Clas... |
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. |
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, Irish, and Gaelic, ⟨c⟩ represents only /k/. The Old English Latin-based writing system was learned from the Celts, apparently of Irela... |
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 /... |
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, chi... |
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... |
== Use in writing systems == |
In English orthography, ⟨c⟩ generally represents the "soft" value of 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 before any other letters or at the end of a word. However, there are a number of exceptions ... |
The digraph ⟨ch⟩ most commonly represents , but can also represent (mainly in words of Greek origin) or (mainly in words of French origin). For some dialects of English, it may also represent in words like loch, while other speakers pronounce the final sound as . The trigraph ⟨tch⟩ always represents . The digraph ⟨c... |
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, Catalan, 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.... |
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⟩. Ger... |
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 /t͡s/, the voiceless ... |
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 /t͡ʃ/. In Azeri, Crimean Tatar, Kurmanji Kurdish, and Turkish, ⟨c⟩ stands for the voiced co... |
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. |
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 ⟨s... |
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 Yogh, which is derived from Latin ⟨G⟩ |
Phonetic alphabet symbols related to ⟨C⟩: |
⟨ɕ⟩ : Small ⟨c⟩ with curl |
⟨𝼏⟩ : Stretched ⟨c⟩ with curl – Used by Douglas Beach for a nasal click in his phonetic description of Khoekhoe. |
⟨𝼝⟩ : Small letter ⟨c⟩ with retroflex hook – Para-IPA version of the IPA retroflex tʂ. |
⟨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; also used in para-IPA notation. |
⟨ᶜ⟩ : Modifier letter small c |
⟨ᶝ⟩ : Modifier letter small ⟨c⟩ with curl |
⟨ᴄ⟩ : Small capital ⟨c⟩ is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. |
⟨Ꞔ⟩ ⟨ꞔ⟩ : ⟨C⟩ with palatal hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of pinyin romanization during the mid-1950s. |
⟨C⟩ with diacritics: Ć ć Ĉ ĉ Č č Ċ ċ Ḉ ḉ Ƈ ƈ C̈ c̈ Ȼ ȼ Ç ç Ꞔ ꞔ Ꞓ ꞓ |
⟨Ↄ⟩ ⟨ↄ⟩ : Claudian letters |
=== Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols === |
₢ : Brazilian cruzeiro (currency) |
₵ : Ghana cedi (currency) |
₠ : European Currency Unit CE |
{\displaystyle \mathbb {C} } |
: blackboard bold C, denoting the complex numbers |
Ꜿ ꜿ : Medieval abbreviation for Latin syllables con- and com-, and Portuguese -us and -os. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.