Hard and soft C

In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, including English, a distinction between hard and soft occurs in which represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard often precedes the non-front vowels , and , and is that of the voiceless velar stop, (as in ''car''). The sound of a soft , typically before , and , may be a fricative or affricate, depending on the language. In English, the sound of soft is (as in the first and final c's in "circumference").

There was no soft 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 is and of soft 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 pronunciation occurs before ; it also occurs before and in a number of Greek and Latin loanwords (such as '' coelacanth'', '' caecum'', '' caesar''). The hard pronunciation occurs everywhere else except in the letter combinations , , and which have distinct pronunciation rules. generally represents before , as in ''accident'', ''succeed'', and ''coccyx''.

There are exceptions to the general rules of hard and soft :
* The 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 ) or ''Cymric'', are also pronounced hard. The Irish and Welsh languages have no letter K, so all Cs are pronounced hard.
* The is hard in a handful of words like '' arcing'', '' synced''/'' syncing'', '' chicer'' (), and ''Quebecer'' (alternatively spelled ) that involve a word normally spelled with a final followed by an affix starting with or ; ''soccer'' and '' recce'' also have a hard .
* The in '' sceptic'', and its derivatives such as ''sceptical'' and ''scepticism'', represents . These words are alternative spellings to and , respectively.
* The of '' flaccid'' now sometimes represents a single soft pronunciation , which is a simplification of .
* The is silent before 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 appears before and is optionally indicated to be soft by means of attaching a cedilla to its bottom, giving ''façade'', ''limaçon''.

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

When adding suffixes with (such as ''-ed'', ''-ing'', ''-er'', ''-est'', ''-ism'', ''-ist'', ''-y'', and ''-ie'') to root words ending in , the final of the root word is often dropped and the root word retains the soft 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 in newly coined words using these suffixes is not always clear. The digraph may be used to retain the hard 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 alternate with the addition of suffixes as in ''critic''/''criticism'' and ''electric''/''electricity'' (''electrician'' has a soft 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 . For example, may represent (as in ''chicken''), (as in ''chef''), or (as in ''choir''). Other letter combinations that don't follow the paradigm include , , , , , and . These come primarily from loanwords.

Besides a few examples (''recce'', ''soccer'', '' Speccy''), fits neatly with the regular rules of : Before , the second 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 .

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 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 pronunciation is (as in ''cello'' and ''ciao''), while the hard is the same as in English. Italian orthography uses to indicate a hard pronunciation before or , analogous to English using (as in ''kill'' and ''keep'') and (as in ''mosquito'' and ''queue'').

In addition to hard and soft , the digraph represents when followed by or (as in ''crescendo'' and ''fascia''). Meanwhile, in Italian represents , not , but English-speakers commonly mispronounce it as due to familiarity with the German pronunciation. Italian uses to indicate the gemination of before , , or before or . English does not usually geminate consonants and therefore loanwords with soft are pronounced with as with ''cappuccino'', pronounced .

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 pronunciations. ( and ''racage''). Potential remedies include altering the spelling to and ''rasage'', though no standard conventions exist.

Replacement with

Sometimes replaces , , or , as a trope for giving words a hard-edged or whimsical feel. Examples include the '' Mortal Kombat'' franchise and product names such as Kool-Aid and Nesquik. More intensely, this use of has also been used to give extremist or racist connotations. Examples include '' Amerika'' or '' Amerikkka'' (where the 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 , 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 in loanwords and also make this distinction. The soft pronunciation, which occurs before , and , is:
# in Italian, Romanian, and Old English;
# in English, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Latin American Spanish, and in words loaned into Dutch and the Scandinavian languages;
# in European and equatoguinean Spanish;
# 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 ''only'' for , and ''only'' for (this would include those Slavic languages that use Latin script, Hungarian, Albanian, and the Baltic languages).
The hard 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 (Italian ''chiaro'', 'clear'). 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 pronunciations. ( and ''tacez''). Potential remedies include altering the spelling to 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 is used instead of (e.g. ''corazón'' , 'heart'). However, this is essentially equivalent because despite common misconception the symbol is actually derived from a Visigothic Z.

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

A number of orthographies do not make a hard/soft distinction. The 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 : this results from a similar historical palatalization development. Soft is typically a palatal or an alveolo-palatal , and occurs before not only , and , but also , , and . Another similar system with hard and soft is found in Faroese with the hard being and the soft being , and Turkish where the soft is .

The Vietnamese alphabet, while based on European orthographies, does not have a hard or a soft per se. The letter , outside of the digraph , always represents a hard /k/ sound. However, it never occurs in "soft positions", i.e. before , where is used instead, while never occurs elsewhere except in the digraph and a few loanwords. Hồ Chí Minh had proposed a simplified spelling, as shown in the title of one of his books, 'Đường kách mệnh'.

Old Bohemian has hard c, but pronounce was Schecowitz, Tocowitz, Crudim

See also

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

Notes

References

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{{DEFAULTSORT:C - Hard And Soft
Consonants
Spelling
English orthography