Ç
Ç ç
(See below)
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Language of origin	Old Spanish language
Phonetic usage	[s] [t͡ʃ] [d͡ʒ] [t͡s] [d͡z] [ç] [ɽ] [ǂ] [θ] [ð] [ɕ] /sɪˈdɪlə/[ç]
Unicode codepoint	U+00C7, U+00E7
History
Development	Ζ ζ 𐌆 Z z Ꝣ ꝣ Ç ç
Time period	~900 to present
Descendants	None
Sisters	Zz Źź Żż Žž Ƶƶ Ȥȥ Ɀɀ ʐ ʑ ᵶ ᶎ Ẑẑ Ẕẕ Ẓẓ Ⱬⱬ Ʒʒ Ζζ Зз З́з́ Ҙҙ Ӟӟ З̌з̌ Ӡӡ
Transliteration equivalents	ch, c, s, ts
Variations	(See below)
Other
Other letters commonly used with	c, ch, s, ts
Writing direction	Left-to-Right

Ç or ç (C-cedilla) is a Latin script letter used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Manx, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish, Kazakh, and Romance alphabets. Romance languages that use this letter include Catalan, French, Portuguese, and Occitan, as a variant of the letter C with a cedilla. It is also occasionally used in Crimean Tatar and in Tajik (when written in the Latin script) to represent the /d͡ʒ/ sound. It is often retained in the spelling of loanwords from any of these languages in English, Basque, Dutch, Spanish and other languages using the Latin alphabet.

It was first used for the sound of the voiceless alveolar affricate /t͡s/ in Old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter z (Ꝣ). The phoneme originated in Vulgar Latin from the palatalization of the plosives /t/ and /k/ in some conditions. Later, /t͡s/ changed into /s/ in many Romance languages and dialects. Spanish has not used the symbol since an orthographic reform in the 18th century (which replaced ç with the now-devoiced z), but it was adopted for writing other languages.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /ç/ represents the voiceless palatal fricative.

Usage as a letter variant in various languages

Evolution from Visigoth Z to modern Ç.

In many languages, ⟨ç⟩ represents the "soft" sound /s/ where a ⟨c⟩ would normally represent the "hard" sound /k/. These include:

• Catalan. Known as ce trencada ('broken C') in this language, where it can be used before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or at the end of a word. Some examples of words with ⟨ç⟩ are amenaça ('menace'), torçat ('twisted'), xoriço ('chorizo'), forçut ('strong'), dolç ('sweet') and caça ('hunting'). A well-known word with this character is Barça, a common Catalan clipping of Futbol Club Barcelona.
• French (cé cédille): français ('French'), garçon ('boy'), façade ('frontage'), grinçant ('squeaking'), leçon ('lesson'), reçu ('received' [past participle]). French does not use the character at the end of a word but it can occur at the beginning of a word (e.g., ça, 'that').^[1] It is never used in French where C would denote /s/ (before e, i, y) nor before h.
• Occitan (ce cedilha): torçut ('twisted'), çò ('this'), ça que la ('nevertheless'), braç ('arm'), brèç ('cradle'), voraç ('voracious'). It can occur at the beginning or end of words.
• Portuguese (cê-cedilha, cê de cedilha or cê cedilhado): it is used before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩: taça ('cup'), braço ('arm'), açúcar ('sugar'). Modern Portuguese does not use the character at the beginning or at the end of a word (the nickname for Conceição is São, not Ção). According to a Portuguese grammar written in 1550, the letter ç had the sound of /dz/ around that time. Another grammar written around 1700 would say that the letter ç sounds like /s/, which shows a phonetic evolution that is still valid today.
• Old Galician used the ç letter, however it is no longer present in the official norm for the Galician language by the Royal Galician Academy. However, the unofficial norm for the Galician language by the AGAL reclaims the ç as part of the language.
• Old Spanish used ç to represent /t͡s/. It also represented /d͡z/ allophonically when it occurred before a voiced consonant.
• Early Modern Spanish used the letter ç to represent either /θ/ or /s/ before /a/, /o/, and /u/ in much the same way as Modern Spanish uses the letter z. Middle Castilian Spanish pronounced ç as /θ/, or as /ð/ before a voiced consonant. Andalusian, Canarian, and Latin American Spanish pronounced ç as /s/, or as /z/ before a voiced consonant. A spelling reform in the 18th century eliminated ç from Spanish orthography.

In other languages, it represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ (like ⟨ch⟩ in English chalk):

• Friulian (c cun cedilie) before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or at the end of a word.

In Manx, it is used in the digraph ⟨çh⟩, which also represents /t͡ʃ/, to differentiate it from normal ⟨ch⟩, which represents /x/.

As a separate letter in various languages

It represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ in the following languages:

• the 4th letter of the Albanian alphabet.
• the 4th letter of the Azerbaijani alphabet.
• the 4th letter of the Turkish alphabet.
• the 3rd letter of the Turkmen alphabet.
• the 4th letter of the Kurmanji alphabet (also known as Northern Kurdish).
• the 4th letter of the Zazaki alphabet.

In the 2020 version of the Latin Kazakh Alphabet, the letter represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate /tɕ/, which is similar to /t͡ʃ/.

It previously represented a voiceless palatal click /ǂ/ in Juǀʼhoansi and Naro, though the former has replaced it with ⟨ǂ⟩ and the latter with ⟨tc⟩.

The similarly shaped letter the (Ҫ ҫ) is used in the Cyrillic alphabets of Bashkir and Chuvash to represent /θ/ and /ɕ/, respectively.

In Tatar, ç represents /ɕ/.

It also represents the retroflex flap /ɽ/ in the Rohingya Latin alphabet.

Janalif uses this letter to represent the voiced postalveolar affricate /d͡ʒ/

Old Malay uses ç to represent /dʒ/ and /ɲ/.

Computer

See also

• Ҹ

References

Look up Ç or ç in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.