Hard and soft C

In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, including English, a distinction between hard and soft Template:Angle bracket occurs in which Template:Angle bracket represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard Template:Angle bracket often precedes the non-front vowels Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket, and is that of the voiceless velar stop, (as in car). The sound of a soft Template:Angle bracket, typically before Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket, may be a fricative or affricate, depending on the language. In English (and not coincidentally also French), the sound of soft Template:Angle bracket is (as in the first and last ⟨c⟩s in "circumference").

There was no soft Template:Angle bracket in classical Latin, where it was always pronounced as .

History

This alternation is caused by a historical palatalization of which took place in Late Latin, and led to a change in the pronunciation of the sound before the front vowels and . Later, other languages not directly descended from Latin, such as English, inherited this feature as an orthographic convention.

English

General overview

In English orthography, the pronunciation of hard Template:Angle bracket is and of soft Template:Angle bracket is generally . Yod-coalescence has altered instances of ─ particularly in unstressed syllables ─ to in most varieties of English, affecting words such as ocean, logician and magician. Generally, the soft Template:Angle bracket pronunciation occurs before Template:Angle bracket; it also occurs before Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket in a number of Greek and Latin loanwords (such as coelacanth, caecum, caesar). The hard Template:Angle bracket pronunciation occurs everywhere else except in the letter combinations Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, and Template:Angle bracket which have distinct pronunciation rules. Template:Angle bracket generally represents before Template:Angle bracket, as in accident, succeed, and coccyx.

There are exceptions to the general rules of hard and soft Template:Angle bracket:

• The Template:Angle bracket in the words Celt and Celtic was traditionally soft, but since the late 19th century, the hard pronunciation has also been recognized in conscious imitation of the classical Latin pronunciation of Celtae; see Pronunciation of Celtic. Welsh and Gaelic loanwords in English which retain their native spelling, such as ceilidh, cistvaen (alternatively spelled Template:Angle bracket) or Cymric, are also pronounced hard. The Irish and Welsh languages have no letter K, so all Cs are pronounced hard.
• The Template:Angle bracket is hard in a handful of words like arcing, synced/syncing, chicer (), and Quebecer (alternatively spelled Template:Angle bracket) that involve a word normally spelled with a final Template:Angle bracket followed by an affix starting with Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket; soccer and recce also have a hard Template:Angle bracket.
• The Template:Angle bracket in sceptic, and its derivatives such as sceptical and scepticism, represents . These words are alternative spellings to Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket, respectively.
• The Template:Angle bracket of flaccid now sometimes represents a single soft Template:Angle bracket pronunciation , which is a simplification of .
• The Template:Angle bracket is silent before Template:Angle bracket in indict and its derivatives such as indictment, in the name of the U.S. state Connecticut, and in some pronunciations of Arctic and Antarctic.
• In a few cases such as facade and limacon, a soft Template:Angle bracket appears before Template:Angle bracket and is optionally indicated to be soft by means of attaching a cedilla to its bottom, giving façade, limaçon.
• The second Template:Angle bracket in supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (a humorous invented word from the eponymous Mary Poppins soundtrack song) is pronounced as a hard Template:Angle bracket, separately from the following vowel on the syllable represented by Template:Angle bracket, as it is an assemblage of parts from existing words, here the suffix -istic.

A [[silent E|silent Template:Angle bracket]] can occur after Template:Angle bracket at the end of a word or component root word part of a larger word. The Template:Angle bracket can serve a marking function indicating that the preceding Template:Angle bracket is soft, as in dance and enhancement. The silent Template:Angle bracket often additionally indicates that the vowel before Template:Angle bracket is a long vowel, as in rice, mace, and pacesetter.

When adding suffixes with Template:Angle bracket (such as -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -ism, -ist, -y, and -ie) to root words ending in Template:Angle bracket, the final Template:Angle bracket of the root word is often dropped and the root word retains the soft Template:Angle bracket pronunciation as in danced, dancing, and dancer from dance. The suffixes -ify and -ise/-ize can be added to most nouns and adjectives to form new verbs. The pronunciation of Template:Angle bracket in newly coined words using these suffixes is not always clear. The digraph Template:Angle bracket may be used to retain the hard Template:Angle bracket pronunciation in inflections and derivatives of a word such as trafficking from the verb traffic.

There are several cases in English in which hard and soft Template:Angle bracket alternate with the addition of suffixes as in critic/criticism and electric/electricity (electrician has a soft Template:Angle bracket pronunciation of because of yod-coalescence).

Letter combinations

A number of two-letter combinations or digraphs follow distinct pronunciation patterns and do not follow the hard/soft distinction of Template:Angle bracket. For example, Template:Angle bracket may represent (as in chicken), (as in chef), or (as in choir). Other letter combinations that don't follow the paradigm include Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, and Template:Angle bracket. These come primarily from loanwords.

Besides a few examples (recce, soccer, Speccy), Template:Angle bracket fits neatly with the regular rules of Template:Angle bracket: Before Template:Angle bracket, the second Template:Angle bracket is soft while the first is hard. Words such as accept and success are pronounced with and words such as succumb and accommodate are pronounced with . Exceptions include loanwords from Italian such as cappuccino with for Template:Angle bracket.

Many placenames and other proper nouns with -cester (from Old English ceaster, meaning Roman station or walled town) are pronounced with such as Worcester (), Gloucester ( or ), and Leicester (). The pronunciation occurs as a combination of a historically soft Template:Angle bracket pronunciation and historical elision of the first vowel of the suffix.

Italian loanwords

The original spellings and pronunciations of Italian loanwords have mostly been kept. Many English words that have been borrowed from Italian follow a distinct set of pronunciation rules corresponding to those in Italian. The Italian soft Template:Angle bracket pronunciation is (as in cello and ciao), while the hard Template:Angle bracket is the same as in English. Italian orthography uses Template:Angle bracket to indicate a hard pronunciation before Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket, analogous to English using Template:Angle bracket (as in kill and keep) and Template:Angle bracket (as in mosquito and queue).

In addition to hard and soft Template:Angle bracket, the digraph Template:Angle bracket represents or, if between vowels, when followed by Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket (as in scena or sciarpa with , crescendo and fascia with ). Meanwhile, Template:Angle bracket in Italian always represents , not , but English-speakers commonly pronounce it as , perhaps in part due to familiarity with the German pronunciation; thus bruschetta often is realized not with the of Italian , but with . Italian uses Template:Angle bracket to indicate the geminate before Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket or before Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket. English does not have geminate phonemes, thus loanwords with soft Template:Angle bracket that are pronounced with in Italian, such as cappuccino, are normally pronounced in English with the geminate simplified: .

Suffixation issues

Rarely, the use of unusual suffixed forms to create neologisms occurs. For example, the words ace and race are both standard words but adding -ate or -age (both productive affixes in English) would create spellings that seem to indicate hard Template:Angle bracket pronunciations. (Template:Not a typo and racage). Potential remedies include altering the spelling to Template:Not a typo and rasage, though no standard conventions exist.

Replacement with Template:Angle bracket

Sometimes Template:Angle bracket replaces Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, or Template:Angle bracket, as a trope for giving words a hard-edged or whimsical feel, in addition to enabling the copyright of commercial names. Examples include the Mortal Kombat franchise and product names such as Kool-Aid and Nesquik. More intensely, this use of Template:Angle bracket has also been used to give extremist or racist connotations. Examples include Amerika or Amerikkka (where the Template:Angle bracket is reminiscent of German and the totalitarian Nazi regime and the racist Ku Klux Klan, respectively).

Other languages

Most modern Romance languages make the hard/soft distinction with Template:Angle bracket, except a few that have undergone spelling reforms such as Ladino and archaic variants like Sardinian. Some non-Romance languages like German, Danish and Dutch use Template:Angle bracket in loanwords and also make this distinction. The soft Template:Angle bracket pronunciation, which occurs before Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket, is:

1. in Italian, Romanian, and Old English;
2. in English, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Latin American Spanish, and in words loaned into Dutch and the Scandinavian languages;
3. in European and Equatoguinean Spanish;
4. in words loaned into German. This is one of the more archaic pronunciations, and was also the pronunciation in Old Spanish, Old French and other historical languages where it is now pronounced . Most languages in eastern and central Europe came to use Template:Angle bracket only for , and Template:Angle bracket only for (this would include those Slavic languages that use Latin script, Hungarian, Albanian, and the Baltic languages).

The hard Template:Angle bracket occurs in all other positions and represents in all these aforementioned languages, including in the case of ⟨c⟩ that comes before the Romanian letter î, which is different from i.

In Italian and Romanian, the orthographic convention for representing before front vowels is to add Template:Angle bracket (Italian chiaro, 'clear'). Template:Angle bracket is used to accomplish the same purpose in Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. Rarely, the use of unusual suffixed forms to create neologisms occurs. For example, the words saco and taco are both standard words but adding -es or -ez (both productive affixes in Spanish) would create spellings that seem to indicate soft Template:Angle bracket pronunciations. (Template:Not a typo and tacez). Potential remedies include altering the spelling to Template:Not a typo and taquez, though no standard conventions exist. In French, Catalan, Portuguese, and Old Spanish a cedilla is used to indicate a soft pronunciation when it would otherwise seem to be hard. (French garçon , 'boy'; Portuguese coração , 'heart'; Catalan caçar , 'to hunt'). Spanish is similar, though Template:Angle bracket is used instead of Template:Angle bracket (e.g. corazón , 'heart'). However, this is essentially equivalent because despite common misconception the symbol Template:Angbr is actually derived from a Visigothic Z.

In the orthographies of Irish and Scottish Gaelic, most consonants including Template:Angle bracket have a "broad" (velarized) vs "slender" distinction (palatalized) for many of its other consonants generally based on whether the nearest vowel is Template:Angle bracket or Template:Angle bracket, respectively. In Irish, ⟨c⟩ usually represents a hard , but represents before e or i, or after i. In Scottish Gaelic, broad Template:Angle bracket is one of /kʰ ʰk ʰk k/, and slender Template:Angle bracket is one of /kʰʲ ʰkʲ ʰkʲ kʲ/, depending on the phonetic environment.

A number of orthographies do not make a hard/soft distinction. The Template:Angle bracket is always hard in Welsh but is always soft in Slavic languages, Hungarian, and in Hanyu Pinyin transcription system of Mandarin Chinese, where it represents and in Indonesian and many of the transcriptions of the languages of India such as Sanskrit and Hindi, where it always represents . See also C § Other languages.

Swedish has a similar phenomenon with hard and soft Template:Angle bracket: this results from a similar historical palatalization development. Soft Template:Angle bracket is typically a palatal or an alveolo-palatal , and occurs before not only Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket and Template:Angle bracket, but also Template:Angle bracket, Template:Angle bracket, and Template:Angle bracket. Another similar system with hard and soft Template:Angle bracket is found in Faroese with the hard Template:Angle bracket being and the soft being , and Turkish where the soft Template:Angle bracket is .

The Vietnamese alphabet, while based on European orthographies, does not have a hard or a soft Template:Angle bracket per se. The letter Template:Angle bracket, outside of the digraph Template:Angle bracket, always represents a hard /k/ sound. However, it never occurs in "soft positions", i.e. before Template:Angle bracket, where Template:Angle bracket is used instead, while Template:Angle bracket never occurs elsewhere except in the digraph Template:Angle bracket and a few loanwords. The names of the letters "c" and "k" are borrowed from Europe and those letters don't even occur in their own letter names (C: xê and K: ca.) Hồ Chí Minh had proposed a simplified spelling, as shown in the title of one of his books, 'Đường kách mệnh'.

Old Bohemian had hard c, but it was pronounced [x], as in Schecowitz, Tocowitz, and CrudimTemplate:What.

See also

• C
• English orthography
• I before E except after C
• Hard and soft G