621. The Ç

What do you know about ‘c with a squiggly thing on the bottom’? Let’s test your knowledge…

• “Ç”, “ç” (cedilla) is a Latin script letter and appears in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. “Ç” also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan, and Portuguese languages as a variant of the letter “c”.
• “Ç” represents the “soft” sound /s/ where a “c” would normally represent the “hard” sound /k/ (before “a”, “o”, “u”, or at the end of a word), in the following languages: Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan, Portuguese and in loanwords in English and Basque like façade and limaçon (although typically the ç mark is dropped in English: facade). In Spanish it can also appear in loanwords, especially in Catalan names and toponymy.
• It’s widely believed that Curaçao inherited its “ç” from the Portuguese coração (heart). According to Curaçao Tourism Board’s website, the word “Curaçao” originates from early Spanish colonizers (1499) who named the island “Corazón” (heart), famous Portuguese cartographers of the time then adapted the word “Curaçau” or “Curaçao”
• Dutch and English languages decided to hang on to the unique “ç”, whereas Papiamentu favors “s” (as in Kòrsou) and Spanish favors “z” (as in Curazao). Google is indifferent between ‘Curacao’ and ‘Curaçao’ [but please don’t call our island CuraKao?]
• On French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian keyboards, “ç” is directly available as a separate key. But on most other keyboards, including the US/British keyboards, a combination of keys must be used: in Microsoft Word, these are Ctrl+, and then either C or ⇧ Shift+C.

Rock on “ç”.

Which are your favorite ç words??