CZ:Featured article/Current

Letter C

by Ro Thorpe

---

C, c is a letter of the Latin alphabet. It is the third letter of most variants, being placed after B and before D, as is the case for instance in the English alphabet. Its English name is pronounced [ˈsiː], like see and sea, and is occasionally spelt out as cee.

C is also the Roman numeral representing the number 100.

Use in English

Though very common in English, c has (as in French, Portuguese, Catalan and many varieties of Spanish) no sound of its own. It is either in the back of the throat, exactly like k (kíng) and q (quêen) or it is a hiss, like the most common sound of s (sô, híss). (The accents show stress and pronunciation: see English spellings.)

c is actually more common than k - and much more than q - for the throaty sound. It occurs before back vowels a, o and u: cát, còme, còunt, cûre, côast, and liquid consonants l and r: clíck, crúst, clàss. In crícket, thícket, rácket, wícker, bícker, lócker, dócker, crácker, brácken, bráckish, lácking, the k is needed to show the throaty sound of the second c: without the k, the c would sound like an 's' because of the following e or i. Also, -ck is more common at the end of words as in déck and clóck. But after í, c is quite common finally: plástic, pánic, eléctric, frenétic, mûsic. Compare síc thus with síck ill. Also: mâniác, lîlac, ålmanác, blóc. By contrast, words do not end -ec or -uc.

The hissing s sound occurs before front vowel letters i, e and y: cïrcle, céntre, cŷcle, cínema, nîce, Lâcy, Trâcy, pâcy. For the hissing sound to remain before a back vowel, a cedilla is used in Bàrça (cf. Barcelôna, where no cedilla is needed), curaçào, soûpçon, façàde and Provençàl (*Próvón-sàl).

The famous rule "i before e except after c" applies only to the ê sound (and not to èi as in vèin): cêiling, decêit, recêive, recêipt (-êet). And then, not only after c, as it happens: sêize, wêir, wêird, Nêil, Kêith and Shêila. Compare vèil, vèin, fèint pretend (= fâint swoon), dèign condescend (= Dâne Denmark), rèign queen (= râin wet), and also théir they (= thére here).

Quite often, especially at the beginning of a word, sc is used for the hissing sound before front vowels: scêne, scéptic, scîence, scént, scíssors, scîon, scintílla, scímitar, scŷthe, sciática (*sŷáttica).

In the suffix -ésce: acquiésce, effervésce, and pronounced z in créscent (*crézzənt).

An exceptional c is found in encephalîtis, pronounced k before e (enkéf-); otherwise c is always a hiss before e, i and y.

There are silent cs in indîct, Tûcson and Connécticut.

ch most typically sounds like t plus sh – not usually like sh alone. French, German and Portuguese do not have this sound, although the Germans write it in foreign words as ‘tsch’. Spanish does have it, whence mácho (*mátcho: it is sometimes mispronounced ‘macko’, as if Italian). ch is common in English, which has taken French words like chàrm ('charme' in French) and modified the sound of the French ch, which has the English sh sound: chéck, choôse, chânge, Ríchard and also côach, bêach, chêek, chéss, chêer, cheŵ, escheŵ (which has a rare, separately sounded, s before it). Inside a word, there is often a superfluous t before ch: ítch, dítch, cátch, mátch, bùtcher - but never after r: tŏrch, lürch, àrch, except in names: Pàrtch person = pàrch tongue. And Tchaîkovsky has the T initially.

Uniquely, this sound is spelt Cz, however, in Czéch Republic (= chéck determine = BrE chéque cash).

In some words more recently taken from French, ch sounds exactly like sh in shê: machìne, nìche, pastìche, BrE moustàche, AmE moústáche, párachute, créche, Chicàgo and nónchalant, in which AmE French-style silences the t: *nonshalàn.

In other words, mostly from Greek, ch is pronounced k: chord, chémist, psŷchê, dichótomy, schême, àrchive, synécdochê, schoôner.

In various Celtic words ch can sound like the Arabic kh, e.g. lóch, Dócherty - but many non-Celts simply make the k sound here. And in the variant spelling Dóherty, the h sounds like itself alone - or like kh or k.

.... (read more)