Misplaced Pages

#101898

55-527: 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 / ˈ s iː / ), 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

110-411: A multigraph . Multigraphs include digraphs of two letters (e.g. English ch , sh , th ), and trigraphs of three letters (e.g. English tch ). The same letterform may be used in different alphabets while representing different phonemic categories. The Latin H , Greek eta ⟨Η⟩ , and Cyrillic en ⟨Н⟩ are homoglyphs , but represent different phonemes. Conversely,

165-513: A lowercase form (also called minuscule ). Upper- and lowercase letters represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often used at the beginning of a sentence, as the first letter of a proper name or title, or in headers or inscriptions. They may also serve other functions, such as in the German language where all nouns begin with capital letters. The terms uppercase and lowercase originated in

220-586: A regional language . It is taught in a few colleges near Cherbourg-Octeville . In the Channel Islands , the Norman language has developed separately, but not in isolation, to form: The British and Irish governments recognize Jèrriais and Guernésiais as regional languages within the framework of the British–Irish Council . Sercquiais is in fact a descendant of the 16th-century Jèrriais used by

275-549: A variety of modern uses in mathematics, science, and engineering . People and objects are sometimes named after letters, for one of these reasons: The word letter entered Middle English c.  1200 , borrowed from the Old French letre . It eventually displaced the previous Old English term bōcstæf ' bookstaff '. Letter ultimately descends from the Latin littera , which may have been derived from

330-694: A number of Old French words which have been lost in Modern French. Examples of Norman French words of Old French origin: en anc. fr. : pétale Examples of Norman French words with -ei instead of -oi in Standard French words Examples of Norman French words with c- / qu- and g- instead of ch- and j in Standard French Examples of Norman words of Norse origin: In some cases, Norse words adopted in Norman have been borrowed into French – and more recently some of

385-534: Is a langue d'oïl . The name "Norman French" is sometimes also used to describe the administrative languages of Anglo-Norman and Law French used in England . For the most part, the written forms of Norman and modern French are mutually intelligible . The thirteenth-century philosopher Roger Bacon was the first to distinguish it along with other dialects such as Picard and Bourguignon . Today, although it does not enjoy any official status, some reports of

440-513: Is a voiceless dental fricative /θ/ . In Italian and Romanian , the soft ⟨c⟩ is [t͡ʃ] . 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⟩

495-456: Is considered to be a separate letter from ⟨n⟩ , though this distinction is not usually recognised in English dictionaries. In computer systems, each has its own code point , U+006E n LATIN SMALL LETTER N and U+00F1 ñ LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE , respectively. Letters may also function as numerals with assigned numerical values, for example with Roman numerals . Greek and Latin letters have

550-821: Is found in Polish and ⟨cs⟩ in Hungarian, representing /t͡ʂ/ and /t͡ʃ/ 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. Add to C with diacritics: 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

605-561: Is indicated by the existence of precomposed characters for use with computer systems (for example, ⟨á⟩ , ⟨à⟩ , ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨â⟩ , ⟨ã⟩ .) In the following table, letters from multiple different writing systems are shown, to demonstrate the variety of letters used throughout the world. Norman language Previously used: Norman or Norman French ( Normaund , French : Normand [nɔʁmɑ̃] , Guernésiais : Normand , Jèrriais : Nouormand )

SECTION 10

#1732793479102

660-657: 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⟩

715-498: 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

770-843: The Greek ' Γ ' (Gamma) was adopted into the Etruscan alphabet to represent /k/ . Already in the Western Greek alphabet , Gamma first took a ' [REDACTED] ' form in Early Etruscan, then ' [REDACTED] ' 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 '

825-485: 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 /k/ (spelled ⟨ qv ⟩ ) de-labialized to /k/ , meaning that the various Romance languages had /k/ before front vowels. In addition, Norman used

880-559: 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. In English orthography , ⟨c⟩ generally represents the "soft" value of / s / before the letters ⟨e⟩ (including the Latin-derived digraphs ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ , or

935-491: The " Joret line " ( ligne Joret ) separates the northern and southern dialects of the Norman language (the line runs from Granville, Manche to the French-speaking Belgian border in the province of Hainaut and Thiérache ). Dialectal differences also distinguish western and eastern dialects. Three different standardized spellings are used: continental Norman, Jèrriais, and Dgèrnésiais. These represent

990-507: The English words used in French can be traced back to Norman origins. Following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the Norman and other languages and dialects spoken by the new rulers of England were used during several hundred years, developing into the unique insular dialect now known as Anglo-Norman French , and leaving traces of specifically Norman words that can be distinguished from

1045-635: The French Ministry of Culture have recognized it as one of the regional languages of France . When Norse Vikings from modern day Scandinavia arrived in Neustria , in the western part of the then Kingdom of the Franks , and settled the land that became known as Normandy, these North-Germanic –speaking people came to live among a local Gallo-Romance –speaking population. In time, the communities converged, so that Normandy continued to form

1100-645: The Greek diphthera 'writing tablet' via Etruscan . Until the 19th century, letter was also used interchangeably to refer to a speech segment . Before alphabets, phonograms , graphic symbols of sounds, were used. There were three kinds of phonograms: verbal, pictures for entire words, syllabic, which stood for articulations of words, and alphabetic, which represented signs or letters. The earliest examples of which are from Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, dating to c.  3000 BCE . The first consonantal alphabet emerged around c.  1800 BCE , representing

1155-563: The Latin ⟨C⟩ has a separate encoding: U+0421 С CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ES . [REDACTED] Letter (alphabet) A letter is a type of grapheme , the smallest functional unit within a writing system. Letters are graphemes that broadly correspond to phonemes , the smallest functional units of sound in speech. Similarly to how phonemes are combined to form spoken words, letters may be combined to form written words. A single phoneme may also be represented by multiple letters in sequence, collectively called

SECTION 20

#1732793479102

1210-495: 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 alveolar or voiceless dental sibilant affricate . In Hanyu Pinyin , the standard romanization of Mandarin Chinese ,

1265-424: 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⟩

1320-730: The Phoenicians, Semitic workers in Egypt. Their script was originally written and read from right to left. From the Phoenician alphabet came the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. From there, the most widely used alphabet today emerged, Latin, which is written and read from left to right. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, nineteen of which the Latin alphabet used, and the Greek alphabet, adapted c.  900 BCE , added four letters to those used in Phoenician. This Greek alphabet

1375-639: 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⟩

1430-516: 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,

1485-583: The area of south-east Ireland, where the Hiberno-Normans invaded in 1169. Norman remains in (limited) use for some very formal legal purposes in the UK, such as when the monarch gives royal assent to an Act of Parliament using the phrase, " Le Roy (la Reyne) le veult " ("The King (the Queen) wills it"). The Norman conquest of southern Italy in the 11th and 12th centuries brought the language to Sicily and

1540-463: 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

1595-644: 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

1650-438: The days of handset type for printing presses. Individual letter blocks were kept in specific compartments of drawers in a type case. Capital letters were stored in a higher drawer or upper case. In most alphabetic scripts, diacritics (or accents) are a routinely used. English is unusual in not using them except for loanwords from other languages or personal names (for example, naïve , Brontë ). The ubiquity of this usage

1705-459: The different developments and particular literary histories of the varieties of Norman. Norman may therefore be described as a pluricentric language . The Anglo-Norman dialect of Norman served as a language of administration in England following the Norman conquest of England in 1066. This left a legacy of Law French in the language of English courts (though it was also influenced by Parisian French ). In Ireland, Norman remained strongest in

C - Misplaced Pages Continue

1760-629: The distinct forms of ⟨S⟩ , the Greek sigma ⟨Σ⟩ , and Cyrillic es ⟨С⟩ each represent analogous /s/ phonemes. Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z , for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee . Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta ⟨Ζ⟩ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order , which also may vary by language. In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩

1815-604: The equivalent lexical items in French: Other borrowings, such as canvas , captain , cattle and kennel , exemplify how Norman retained Latin /k/ that was not retained in French. In the United Kingdom, Acts of Parliament are confirmed with the words " Le Roy le veult " ("The King wishes it") and other Norman phrases are used on formal occasions as legislation progresses. Norman immigrants to North America also introduced some "Normanisms" to Quebec French and

1870-580: 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. 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

1925-405: 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. In

1980-607: The former Duchy of Normandy : the Channel Islands and the Cotentin Peninsula ( Cotentinais ) in the west, and the Pays de Caux ( Cauchois dialect ) in the east. Ease of access from Paris and the popularity of the coastal resorts of central Normandy, such as Deauville , in the 19th century led to a significant loss of distinctive Norman culture in the central low-lying areas of Normandy. Norman French preserves

2035-571: The late 7th and early 8th centuries. Finally, many slight letter additions and drops were made to the common alphabet used in the western world. Minor changes were made such as the removal of certain letters, such as thorn ⟨Þ þ⟩ , wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ , and eth ⟨Ð ð⟩ . A letter can have multiple variants, or allographs , related to variation in style of handwriting or printing . Some writing systems have two major types of allographs for each letter: an uppercase form (also called capital or majuscule ) and

2090-492: 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

2145-698: 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 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

2200-429: The letter represents an aspirated version of this sound, /t͡s/ . 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

2255-460: 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!)". In the Etruscan language , plosive consonants had no contrastive voicing , so

C - Misplaced Pages Continue

2310-399: 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 loanwords and proper names. Danish keeps soft ⟨c⟩ in Romance words but changes hard ⟨c⟩ to ⟨k⟩ . Swedish has

2365-539: The name of the region while the original Norsemen were largely assimilated by the Gallo-Romance people, adopting their speech but still contributing some elements from Old Norse language and Norse culture. Later, when conquering England, the Norman rulers in England would eventually assimilate, thereby adopting the speech of the local English. In both cases, the elites contributed elements of their own language to

2420-457: The newly enriched languages that developed in the territories. In Normandy, the Norman language inherited only some 150 words from Old Norse. The influence on phonology is disputed, although it is argued that the retention of aspirated / h / and / k / in Norman is due to Norse influence. Norman is spoken in mainland Normandy in France , where it has no official status, but is classed as

2475-445: The original colonists from Jersey who settled the then uninhabited island. The last first-language speakers of Auregnais , the dialect of Norman spoken on Alderney , died during the 20th century, although some rememberers are still alive. The dialect of Herm also lapsed at an unknown date; the patois spoken there was likely Guernésiais (Herm was not inhabited all year round in the Norman culture's heyday). An isogloss termed

2530-596: 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

2585-445: 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

2640-546: The southern part of the Italian Peninsula , where it may have left a few words in the Sicilian language . See: Norman and French influence on Sicilian . Literature in Norman ranges from early Anglo-Norman literature through the 19th-century Norman literary renaissance to modern writers ( see list of Norman-language writers ). As of 2017 , the Norman language remains strongest in the less accessible areas of

2695-517: 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⟩ . As a phonetic symbol, lowercase ⟨ c ⟩ is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and X-SAMPA symbol for the voiceless palatal plosive , and capital ⟨C⟩

2750-510: The voiced counterpart of this sound, the voiced postalveolar affricate /d͡ʒ/ . 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

2805-471: 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

SECTION 50

#1732793479102

2860-407: 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 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

2915-624: 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

2970-456: Was the first to assign letters not only to consonant sounds, but also to vowels . The Roman Empire further developed and refined the Latin alphabet, beginning around 500 BCE. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the development of lowercase letters began to emerge in Roman writing. At this point, paragraphs, uppercase and lowercase letters, and the concept of sentences and clauses still had not emerged; these final bits of development emerged in

3025-425: Was used to represent /k/ or /ɡ/ before a rounded vowel, ' k ' before ' a ', and ' c ' elsewhere. 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

#101898