History of C

	Revision 6 . . November 15, 2001 5:12 pm by Karl Palmen [Didn't the Romans originally use C for /g/ only?]
	Revision 5 . . October 31, 2001 4:18 am by (logged).68.87.xxx

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Difference (from prior major revision) (no other diffs)

Changed: 5c5,9

The third letter in the Roman alphabet. In the Etruscan language there were no voiced plosive?s, so they took over Greek Γ (Gamma) to write their /k/. In the beginning, the Romans used C for both /k/ and /g/. Some scholars claim that the Semitic ג (gîmel) was the picture of a camel. /k/ developed palatal? and velar? allophones in Latin, probably due to Etruscan influence. Therefore, C has many different sound values today, among them /k/ and /s/ in French, /k/ and /T/ (like English TH in THIN) in European Castilian?, /k/ and /tS/ (like English CH) in Italian and so on.

The third letter in the Roman alphabet. In the Etruscan language there were no voiced plosive?s, so they took over Greek Γ (Gamma) to write their /k/. In the beginning, the Romans used C for both /k/ and /g/. Perhaps at an even earlier time, it was /g/ only, while using K for /k/? Some scholars claim that the Semitic ג (gîmel) was the picture of a camel. /k/ developed palatal? and velar? allophones in Latin, probably due to Etruscan influence. Therefore, C has many different sound values today, among them /k/ and /s/ in French, /k/ and /T/ (like English TH in THIN) in European Castilian?, /k/ and /tS/ (like English CH) in Italian and so on. See G.