Cedilla

A cedilla (French cedilla, Spanish cedilla, port. cedilha, actually " little Z", also Zedille, Zedilla, Cedilha ) is a diacritical mark to identify a particular pronunciation of a letter. It is a left curved check mark in the middle under the letter that a 5, a small mirrored c, a small s or z may be similar with bottom loop.

The cedilla is generally at the C or c.

Origin

Originally, the cedilla was not a diacritical mark. Rather, the C with cedilla developed from the so-called Visigothic Z, which was widespread in the Iberian Peninsula and southern France. Its upper loop was enlarged and reinterpreted to C, while the bottom for reduced appendage, the cedilla was.

Use

A C with cedilla is found in Romance languages ​​(eg French, Portuguese, Catalan ), but also in Albanian, in Azerbaijan and Turkish.

The function of the character is different depending on the language. In French, Catalan and Portuguese, it has the function to change the pronunciation of the letter "c": A ç is before the vowels a, o and u is not pronounced as [k ], but as [s ], that is exactly as c is pronounced before e and i. In old Spanish, Occitan and Old Venetian it differs from the normal soft c and was / is spoken as [ ts ].

In Turkish, however, the cedilla makes under the C of a soft- spoken [ dʒ ] a tough [ tʃ ].

In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA ) is used [ ç ] to " I " represent the voiceless palatal fricative ( tongue and palate fricative ) as in.

An S with cedilla ( Ş ) is in Turkish, Azerbaijan and other Turkic languages ​​for the sound [ ʃ ].

On websites with Romanian text you see often " Ş " and " Ţ " with cedilla. The correct character shapes in Romanian text, however, are " Ş " and " Ţ ", ie with a comma below. This sub -point is called the Romanian Virguliţa ( means essentially small comma).

In the Latvian one uses the cedilla with the letter G, K, L, N, and in some traditions also R (GG, KK, LL, NN, RR). The correct form is actually a comma below ( or above - ģ ). It refers to a deviation (in Latvian: mīkstinājuma Zime ), ie the pronunciation of the letter is softer ( ņ = gn, gl = ļ of Italian and similar).

The Mars Hall Maltese language uses the letters L, M, N and O with cedilla (LL, MM, NN, OO).

Encoding

In Unicode is U 0327 COMBINING cedilla, so that, for example, a small c with cedilla U 0063 U 0327 as can be encoded in HTML C or C, the result looks like this: "C". The much less frequently used characters a solitary cedilla, U 00 B8 cedilla in HTML ¸, the result looks like this: " ¸ ".

For the letters that are most commonly used with cedilla, Unicode also defines codes for the composite ( precomposed ) letters, eg U 00 E7 LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH cedilla " ç " ç in HTML. With the Unicode version 3.0 in 1999 additional Unicode character for the correct display of the Romanian letters with comma were introduced.

Input with the keyboard

In the French-speaking countries the keyboards ç must be entered directly as a lowercase letter. On the Swiss keyboard combination Shift 4 must be pressed. On the French and Belgian keyboard, it can be found as the first character assignment on the button 9 Pressing the Shift key is therefore not necessary. In all these keyboards, the direct input of capital letters Ç is not possible. How on keyboards, which have not reserved a button for ç and Ç to proceed is described in the following sections.

Windows

On Windows, can be combined with the cedilla characters by pressing Alt number produce on the numeric keypad:

• Alt 128 Ç →
• Alt 135 ç →

Most programs allow (at set codepage Windows -1252 " Western European" ), only these two letters. In some programs ( such as the character table ), you can also enter Unicode values ​​greater than 255, for example:

• Alt 350 → Ş
• Alt 351 → ş

If one uses Microsoft Word, so you can also use the key combination Ctrl comma, followed by a large or small c, write the cedilla.

X on Unix / Linux

Under X, can the cedilla in German keyboard layout combine ( with dead keys ) by AltGr accent with some letters or type as a composite letter comma.

Mac OS X

In Mac OS X to use the Alt C ( shift for a Ç ).

TeX and LaTeX can represent any character with cedilla. There is this in text mode for typesetting the \ cc command ( written or otherwise \ c { c }), which generates a ç.