C

Third letter of the English alphabet. It corresponds to Hebrew gimel and Greek gamma (Γ, γ), both derived from the Semitic word for ‘camel’. Originally representing a hard /g/, it was also used by the Romans for /k/. In English it can have the sound of the unvoiced alveolar fricative /s/, as in ‘face’, or the unvoiced velar plosive /k/, as in ‘cat’.

These sounds can also be spelt s and k respectively. When followed by an h, c usually denotes an unvoiced palatoalveolar affricate, as in ‘church’, but can also represent the sounds in ‘machine’ and ‘chorus’. In Welsh, ch denotes an unvoiced velar or uvular fricative.

Etruscan did not distinguish between /k/ and /g/, and used the letter c for both. The Latin alphabet adopted from Etruscan three signs with the sound /k/; c, k, and q. It later dropped the k, and used c for both /k/ and /g/. The letter q, when followed by u, was used for the sound /k/. They created a new letter 312 BC for the sound /g/, retaining the letter c for the sound /k/.