Cedilla
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Diacritical marks |
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accent
breve ( ˘ )
hook / dấu hỏi ( ̉ ) |
| Marks sometimes used as diacritics |
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apostrophe ( ’ ) |
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. 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.<ref>
(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 printers' name for that, 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".</ref>
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[edit] 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 voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/ in old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter z. Spanish has not used it since an orthographic reform in the 18th century, but the c-cedilla was adopted for writing other languages.
- It represents the "soft" sound /s/ where c would normally represent the "hard" sound /k/ (before a letter which is neither e nor i, 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. The cedilla is used at the beginning of two rare words ( ça that, ço this) and at the end of a number of words, as well (braç arm, falç sickle). A well-known word with c-cedilla is Barça for "F.C. Barcelona", a common Catalan diminutive of one of Barcelona's football teams that is also used across the world, including by the Spanish-language media.
- French Known as cédille. French occasionally has an initial ç (ça that),<ref>The French Academy online dictionary also gives çà and çûdra.</ref> 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.
- 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.
- Occitan It is used at the beginning of two rare words (çò this, ça que la nevertheless) and at the end of a number of words, as well (braç arm, brèç cradle).
- Portuguese Known as cedilha. Modern Portuguese never uses ç at the beginning of a word.
- It represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /tʃ/ (the same as in English church) in the following languages:
- Albanian
- Azerbaijani
- Standard Friulian The letter c is used for the same sound before e or i.
- Kurdish (at least the Mahabad dialect)
- Tatar
- Turkish In the Turkish alphabet, Ç is considered a separate letter, not a variant of C.
- Turkmen
- In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /ç/ represents the voiceless palatal fricative.
- The cedilla is also sometimes used in the Romanization of Arabic.
- In extended ASCII, can be typed using ALT + 135,
[edit] Use of the cedilla with the letter S
This symbol represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in show) in several languages:
- Azerbaijani
- Kurdish
- Tatar
- Turkish In the Turkish alphabet, the Ş is also considered a separate letter, not a variant of S.
- Turkmen
It is also used in some Romanizations of Arabic, Persian, and Pashto, for the letter ṣād.
[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, although it is well-known that the letter t in the suffix -tion 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 the French diplomatie and the English action, that letter is pronounced as /s/ and /ʃ/, respectively. Firmin-Didot surmised that a new character could be added to French orthography.
A similar letter does exist in Romanian representing /ts/ (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
The Romanian Ș (ș) also represents /ʃ/ (as in show) and seemingly resembles the Turkish s-cedilla, but is more precisely a comma diacritic (virgula). In practice, Ş/ş and Ţ/ţ are widely used writing Romanian, as they are more widely supported in character sets, but the officially correct characters are written with commas, 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.
[edit] Notes
<references />
[edit] See also
| The OSI basic Latin alphabet | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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
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br:Lostig ca:Ç cs:Cedilla de:Cédille es:Ç eo:Cedilo fr:Cédille nl:Cedille ja:セディーユ no:Cedille pl:Ç pt:Ç sv:Cedilj wa:Cedile zh:尾形符號
