Cedilla
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- For the record label, see Cedille Records.
| Ç | ç |
| Ḑ | ḑ |
| Ȩ | ȩ |
| Ģ | ģ |
| Ḩ | ḩ |
| Ķ | ķ |
| Ļ | ļ |
| Ņ | ņ |
| Ŗ | ŗ |
| Ş | ş |
| Ţ | ţ |
| Diacritical marks |
|---|
|
accent
breve ( ˘ )
hook / dấu hỏi ( ̉ ) |
| Marks sometimes used as diacritics |
|
apostrophe ( ’ ) |
A cedilla is a hook (¸) added under certain consonant letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. The tail originated as the bottom half of a miniature cursive "z", and the word "cedilla" is the diminutive of the old Spanish name for this letter, ceda. An obsolete spelling of cedilla is cerilla.[1]
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[edit] Use of the cedilla with the letter C
The most frequent character with cedilla is "ç" ("c" with cedilla). It was first used for the sound of the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/ in old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter "z". This phoneme originated in Vulgar Latin from the palatalization of the plosives /t/ and /k/ in some conditions. Later, /ts/ changed into /s/ in many Romance languages and dialects. Spanish has not used this symbol since an orthographic reform in the 18th century, but it was adopted for writing other languages.
- It represents the "soft" sound /s/ where a "c" would normally represent the "hard" sound /k/ (before "a", "o", "u", or at the end of a word), in the following languages:
- Basque (before the 20th century)
- Catalan. Known as ce trencada (that is, "broken C") in this language. Some examples of words with "c"-cedilla are: torçut "twisted", ço "this", braç "arm", falç "sickle", voraç "voracious". A well-known word with this character is Barça, a common Catalan diminutive for the F.C. Barcelona, one of Barcelona's football teams, also used across the world, including by the Spanish-language media.
- English. A few words are sometimes spelled in English with a "ç", almost all of them borrowings from French. For example, soupçon, garçon, and façade.
- French (cé cédille). Examples: grinçant "squeaking", leçon "lesson", reçu "received" (past participle). French uses this character at the beginning of a word (ça "that"), but not at the end.[2] In French comic books that are hand-lettered in all-capitals, the cedilla is quickly written as a slash crossing the center of the lower hook of the letter "C", at the angle of an acute accent.
- Occitan (ce cedilha). Examples: torçut "twisted", çò "this", ça que la "nevertheless", braç "arm", brèç "cradle", voraç "voracious".
- Portuguese (cê cedilhado or cê cedilha). Examples: taça "cup", braço "arm", açúcar "sugar". Modern Portuguese never uses this character at the beginning or at the end of a word.
- It represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/ (as in English "church") in the following languages:
- Albanian
- Azerbaijani
- In Standard Friulian, before "a", "o", "u" or at the end of a word.
- Kurdish (the Mahabad dialect)
- Tatar
- Turkish. (It is included as a separate letter in the Turkish alphabet.)
- Turkmen
- In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /ç/ represents the voiceless palatal fricative.
- In extended ASCII, "Ç" can be typed using ALT + 128 and "ç" can be typed using ALT + 135.
- In HTML character entity references
Çandçcan be used
[edit] Use of the cedilla with the letter S
The symbol "ş" represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in "show") in several languages:
- Azerbaijani
- Crimean Tatar
- Kurdish
- Tatar
- Turkish (It is included as a separate letter in the Turkish alphabet.)
- Turkmen
For example, it is used in Turkish words or names like Eskişehir, Şımarık, Hakan Şükür, Hasan Şaş, Rüştü Reçber etc.
It is also used in some Romanizations of Arabic, Persian, and Pashto to represent a pharyngealized "s", although the letter "ṣ" is more frequently used for this. See Tsade.
[edit] Prospective use of the cedilla with the letter T
In 1868, Ambroise Firmin-Didot suggested in his book Observations sur l'orthographe, ou ortografie, française (Observations on French Spelling) that French phonetics could be better regularized by adding a cedilla beneath the letter "t" in some words. For example, it is well-known that in the suffix -tion this letter is usually not pronounced as (or close to) /t/ in either French or English. It has to be distinctly learned that in words such as French diplomatie and English action it is pronounced /s/ and /ʃ/, respectively. Firmin-Didot surmised that a new character could be added to French orthography. A similar letter does exist in Romanian (see below).
[edit] Use of the cedilla in Latvian
In Latvian, the cedilla is used on the letters "ģ", "ķ", "ļ", "ņ", and historically also "ŗ", to indicate palatalization. Because the lowercase letter "g" has a descender, the cedilla is rotated 180° and placed over the letter. The uppercase equivalent "Ģ" has a normal cedilla. However, from the typographical point of view, these diacritics are commas.
[edit] Other diacritical marks confused with the cedilla
- Further information: Diacritical comma, Ogonek
Romanian "ș" also represents /ʃ/ (as in "show") but although it resembles the Turkish "s"-cedilla, it is more precisely composed of a diacritical comma (virgula). In practice, "ş" and "ţ" (representing /ts/) are often used to write Romanian, as they are more widely supported in character sets, but the officially correct characters are written with commas, "ș" and "ț" (may not appear on your browser). Example word: Timișoara.
The Polish and Lithuanian letters "ą" and "ę" are not made with the cedilla, but with the unrelated ogonek diacritic; superficially, an ogonek resembles a reversed cedilla (opening to the right instead of the left), but the exact shape is quite different.
[edit] Notes
- ^
(1) For cedilla being the diminutive of ceda, see definition of cedilla, Diccionario de la lengua española, 22nd edition, Real Academia Española. (Spanish) Can be seen in context by accessing the site of the Real Academia and searching for cedilla. Accessed 27 July 2006.
(2) Definition of cedilla in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1970 edition, vol. 2, p. 208 mentions former obscure spelling cerilla, gives it as a diminutive of zēta, mentions only use under the letter "c" in French, Portuguese, and (formerly) Spanish. Earliest cited use is a 1599 Spanish grammar; a 1753 citation shows the entire character "ç" ("c" with cedilla) referred to as "cedilla", a usage it says still has some currency with printers; it also documents another name used by printers, "ceceril".
(3) Etymology of cerilla in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1989 edition, accessed online in 2006, says it originated in Spain "due to interchange of d and r". - ^ The French Academy online dictionary also gives çà and çûdra.
[edit] See also
| The ISO basic Latin alphabet | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | |
| history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
[edit] External links
- Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents
- Keyboard Help — Learn how to create world language accent marks and other diacriticals on a computer
