Cedilla: Encyclopedia - Cedilla

Cedilla

accent

breve ( ˘ )
caron / háček ( ˇ )
cedilla ( ¸ )
circumflex ( ˆ )
diaeresis ( ¨ )
dot ( · )

hook / dấu hỏi (  ̉ )
macron ( ˉ )
ogonek ( ˛ )
ring / kroužek ( ˚ )
spiritus asper ( ʽ )
spiritus lenis (  ʼ )
umlaut ( ¨ )

apostrophe ( ’ )
bar ( | )
colon ( : )
comma ( , )
hyphen ( ˗ )
tilde ( ˜ )
titlo (  ҃ )

A cedilla is a hook (¸) added under certain consonant letters as a diacritic mark to modify their pronunciation. The tail is the bottom half of a miniature cursive z or Ezh: Ʒ/ʒ (). The name "cedilla" is the diminutive of the old Spanish name for the letter Z, ceda. An obsolete spelling of "cedilla" is "cerilla" because d and r were sometimes interchangeable in 16th-century Spanish.

Cedilla - Use of the cedilla with the letter C

The most frequent character with cedilla is the ç (c with cedilla). This letter was used for the sound of the affricate [ts] in old Spanish. Spanish has not used it since an orthographic reform in the 18th century.

C-cedilla was adopted for writing other languages. In some languages, including French, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, some Friulian dialects, and unofficial Basque, it represents /s/ where "c" would normally represent /k/. In other languages, including Turkish, Albanian, Azerbaijani, Tatar, Turkmen, Kurdish (at least the Mahabad dialect), and some Friulian dialects, it is used for the sound of the affricate [tʃ] (the same of English in church). It is also sometimes used in the Romanization of Arabic.

In French, Portuguese, and Catalan ç is used before a, o, or u to indicate that it is read /s/ (unlike c, which is read /k/ before a, o, and u). It is not used before e or i, since c itself is read /s/ before e and i. Additionally, modern Portuguese never uses ç at the beginning of a word. Catalan uses ç as well at the end of a word, and have some rare words with initial ç. One popular word in Catalan that uses ç is Barça" for "Barcelona", a nickname often applied to one of Barcelona's football (soccer) teams that is also used in Spanish media.

In French, the cedilla is known as cédille; in Portuguese, as cedilha; in Catalan as ce trencada (that is broken C).

In those French comic books that are hand-lettered all in 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.

A few words are sometimes spelled in English with a ç, almost all of them borrowings from French, for example façade, soupçon and garçon, however it is common to see these words printed without the cedilla (i.e. facade, garcon, etc.). For example, the Oxford English Dictionary uses the spelling "facade" not "façade".

In the Turkish alphabet Ç is considered a separate letter, not a variant of C.

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

Cedilla - Use of the cedilla with the letter S

Another use of the cedilla is called the s-cedilla, ş, represents /ʃ/ (as in show) in Turkish, Azerbaijan, Tatar, Turkmen, and Kurdish. It is also used in some Romanizations of Arabic, Persian, and Pashto, for the letter ṣād.

In the Turkish alphabet, the Ş is also considered a separate letter, not a variant of S.

Cedilla - 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.

Cedilla - 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, although it is well known that the letter t in the suffix -tion is not pronounced as a t in either French or English, it has to be distinctly learned that in words such as diplomatie, that letter is pronounced as an s. Firmin-Didot surmised that a new character could be added to French orthography.

Cedilla - Other diacritical marks confused with the cedilla

The Romanian Ș (ș) also represents /ʃ/ (as in show) and seemingly resembles the Turkish s cedilla, but it is actually a comma (Virgula). While it is common in online contexts to use Ş/ş and Ţ/ţ in writing Romanian, that is only because they look almost right and are much more widely supported in character sets. The orthographically correct characters are Ș/ș and Ț/ț (may not appear on your browser).

The Polish letters "ą" and "ę" are not made with the cedilla, but with the unrelated ogonek mark; superficially an ogonek resembles a reversed cedilla (open to the right instead of the left), but the exact shape is quite different.

See also

• Ogonek

Categories: Diacritics | Uncommon Latin letters

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cedilla", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki