Ç

Not to be confused with the Cyrillic letter Ҫ.

This article is about the Latin script letter. For the voiceless palatal fricative represented by ç in the IPA, see Voiceless palatal fricative.

Ç
Ç ç
(See below)
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Language of origin	Old Spanish language
Sound values	[s] [t͡ʃ] [d͡ʒ] [t͡s] [d͡z] [ç] [ɽ] [ǂ] [θ] [ð] [ɕ] /sɪˈdɪlə/[ç]
In Unicode	U+00C7, U+00E7
History
Development	Ζ ζ 𐌆 Z z Ꝣ ꝣ Ç ç
Time period	~900 to present
Descendants	None
Sisters	Zz Źź Żż Žž Ƶƶ Ȥȥ Ɀɀ ʐ ʑ ᵶ ᶎ Ẑẑ Ẕẕ Ẓẓ Ⱬⱬ Ʒʒ Ζζ Зз З́з́ Ҙҙ Ӟӟ З̌з̌ Ӡӡ
Transliterations	ch, c, s, ts
Variations	(See below)
Other
Associated graphs	c, ch, s, ts
Writing direction	Left-to-Right

Ç or ç (C-cedilla) is a Latin script letter used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Manx, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish, Kazakh, and Romance alphabets. Romance languages that use this letter include Catalan, French, Portuguese, and Occitan, as a variant of the letter C with a cedilla. It is also occasionally used in Crimean Tatar and in Tajik (when written in the Latin script) to represent the /d͡ʒ/ sound. It is rarely used in Balinese, usually only in the word "Çaka" during Nyepi, one of the Balinese Hinduism holidays. It is often retained in the spelling of loanwords from any of these languages in English, Basque, Dutch, Spanish and other languages using the Latin alphabet.

It was first used for the sound of the voiceless alveolar affricate /t͡s/ in Old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter z (Ꝣ). The phoneme originated in Vulgar Latin from the palatalization of the plosives /t/ and /k/ in some conditions. Later, /t͡s/ changed into /s/ in many Romance languages and dialects. Spanish has not used the symbol since an orthographic reform in the 18th century (which replaced ç with the now-devoiced z), but it was adopted for writing other languages.

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

Usage as a letter variant in various languages

Evolution from Visigoth Z to modern Ç.

In many languages, ⟨ç⟩ represents the "soft" sound /s/ where a ⟨c⟩ would normally represent the "hard" sound /k/. These include:

• Catalan. Known as ce trencada ('broken C') in this language, where it can be used before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or at the end of a word. Some examples of words with ⟨ç⟩ are amenaça ('menace'), torçat ('twisted'), xoriço ('chorizo'), forçut ('strong'), dolç ('sweet') and caça ('hunting'). The only two words starting with ç that can be found in the dictionary are ço ('this') and ça ('here'), which are rarely used, except for some expressions like ço que ('which'). A well-known word with this character is Barça, a common Catalan clipping of Futbol Club Barcelona. When writing by hand, Catalans don't write ç with a cedilla under it, but a symbol similar to a comma, which crosses the c (called trenc). In fact, some scholars like Jesús Alturo claim that ce trencada evolved from combining c and i (written c_i) instead of the letter z.
• French (cé cédille): français ('French'), garçon ('boy'), façade ('frontage'), grinçant ('squeaking'), leçon ('lesson'), reçu ('received' [past participle]). French does not use the character at the end of a word but it can occur at the beginning of a word (e.g., ça, 'that'). It is never used in French where C would denote /s/ (before e, i, y) nor before h.
• Occitan (ce cedilha): torçut ('twisted'), çò ('this'), ça que la ('nevertheless'), braç ('arm'), brèç ('cradle'), voraç ('voracious'). It can occur at the beginning or end of words.
• Portuguese (cê-cedilha, cê de cedilha or cê cedilhado): it is used before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩: taça ('cup'), braço ('arm'), açúcar ('sugar'). Modern Portuguese does not use the character at the beginning or at the end of a word (the nickname for Conceição is São, not Ção). According to a Portuguese grammar written in 1550, the letter ç had the sound of /dz/ around that time. Another grammar written around 1700 would say that the letter ç sounds like /s/, which shows a phonetic evolution that is still valid today.
• Old Galician used the ç letter, however it is no longer present in the official norm for the Galician language by the Royal Galician Academy. However, the unofficial norm for the Galician language by the AGAL reclaims the ç as part of the language.
• Old Spanish used ç to represent /t͡s/.
• Early Modern Spanish used the letter ç to represent either /θ/ or /s/ before /a/, /o/, and /u/ in much the same way as Modern Spanish uses the letter z. Middle Castilian Spanish pronounced ç as /θ/. Andalusian, Canarian, and Latin American Spanish pronounced ç as /s/. A spelling reform in the 18th century eliminated ç from Spanish orthography.

In other languages, it represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ (like ⟨ch⟩ in English chalk):

• Friulian (c cun cedilie) before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or at the end of a word.

• Balinese Ç usually used to commemorate the Nyepi holiday only used in the word 'Çaka', for example:

"Selamat Hari Raya Nyepi tahun Çaka 1945" (Happy Nyepi Day in Çaka 1945)
The pronunciation is similar to the slavic S.

• In Manx it is used in the digraph ⟨çh⟩, which also represents /t͡ʃ/, to differentiate it from normal ⟨ch⟩, which represents /x/.

In loanwords only

• In Basque, ⟨ç⟩ (known as ze hautsia) is used in the loanword Curaçao.
• In Dutch, it can be found in some words from French and Portuguese, such as façade, reçu, Provençaals and Curaçao.
• In English, ⟨ç⟩ is used in loanwords such as façade and limaçon (although the cedilla mark is often dropped: ⟨facade⟩, ⟨limacon⟩).

As a separate letter in various languages

It represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ in the following languages:

• the 4th letter of the Albanian alphabet.
• the 4th letter of the Azerbaijani alphabet.
• the 4th letter of the Dobrujan Tatar alphabet.
• the 4th letter of the Turkish alphabet.
• the 3rd letter of the Turkmen alphabet.
• the 4th letter of the Kurmanji alphabet (also known as Northern Kurdish).
• the 4th letter of the Zazaki alphabet.

Catalan way for writing Ç.

In the 2020 version of the Latin Kazakh Alphabet, the letter represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate /tɕ/, which is similar to /t͡ʃ/.

It previously represented a voiceless palatal click /ǂ/ in Juǀʼhoansi and Naro, though the former has replaced it with ⟨ǂ⟩ and the latter with ⟨tc⟩.

The similarly shaped letter the (Ҫ ҫ) is used in the Cyrillic alphabets of Bashkir and Chuvash to represent /θ/ and /ɕ/, respectively.

In Tatar, ç represents /ɕ/.

It also represents the retroflex flap /ɽ/ in the Rohingya Latin alphabet.

Janalif uses this letter to represent the voiced postalveolar affricate /d͡ʒ/

Old Malay uses ç to represent /dʒ/ and /ɲ/.

Computer

Character information

Preview	Ç		ç		Ꝣ		ꝣ
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA		LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA		LATIN CAPITAL LETTER VISIGOTHIC Z		LATIN SMALL LETTER VISIGOTHIC Z
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	199	U+00C7	231	U+00E7	42850	U+A762	42851	U+A763
UTF-8	195 135	C3 87	195 167	C3 A7	234 157 162	EA 9D A2	234 157 163	EA 9D A3
Numeric character reference	Ç	Ç	ç	ç	Ꝣ	Ꝣ	ꝣ	ꝣ
Named character reference	Ç		ç

Input

On Albanian, Belgian, European French, Portuguese, Spanish, Swiss, Turkish and Italian keyboards, Ç is directly available as a separate key; however, on most other keyboards, including the US and British keyboard, a combination of keys must be used:

• In the US-International keyboard layout, these are ' followed by either C or ⇧ Shift+C. Alternatively one may press AltGr+, or AltGr+⇧ Shift+,. The Canadian French layout has a dedicated dead key in the spot of the ] key.
• In classic Mac OS and macOS, these are ⌥ Opt+C and ⌥ Opt+⇧ Shift+C for lower- and uppercase, respectively.
• In the X Window System and many Unix consoles, one presses sequentially Compose, , and either C or ⇧ Shift+C. Alternatively, one may press AltGr+= and then either C or ⇧ Shift+C.
• In Microsoft Windows, these are Alt+0231 or Alt+135 for lowercase and Alt+0199 or Alt+128 for uppercase.
• In Microsoft Word, these are Ctrl+, and then either C or ⇧ Shift+C.
• The HTML character entity references are ç and Ç for lower- and uppercase, respectively.
• In TeX and LaTeX, \c is used for adding the cedilla accent to a letter, so \c{c} produces "ç".

See also

• Ҹ