Cedilla

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
¸
Diacritical marks
designation character
Acute, simple ◌́
Acute, double ◌̋
Breve, about it ◌̆
Breve, including ◌̮
Cedilla, including ◌̧
Cedilla, about it ◌̒
Gravis, simple ◌̀
Gravis, double ◌̏
hook ◌̉
Hatschek ◌̌
horn ◌̛
Comma below ◌̦
Coronis ◌̓
Kroužek, about it ◌̊
Kroužek, including ◌̥
Macron, about it ◌̄
Macron, underneath ◌̱
Ogonek ◌̨
Period about that ◌̇
Point below ◌̣
Dash ◌̶
diacritical
slash
◌̷
Alcohol asper ◌̔
Spiritus lenis ◌̕
Tilde, about it ◌̃
Tilde, underneath ◌̰
Trema, about it ◌̈
Trema, including ◌̤
circumflex ◌̂
Çç Şş
Cedilla; Font: Garamond
¸ Ç ç

A cedilla [ seˈdiːj (ə) ] ( French cédille , Spanish cedilla , Portuguese cedilha , actually "small Z"; also cedilla , zedilla , cedilha ) is a diacritical mark to identify a particular pronunciation of a letter . There's a left-curved check mark in the center below the letter that can resemble a 5, a lowercase mirrored c, a lowercase s, or a z with a sub- loop.

The cedilla is usually at the C or c.

origin

Visigotic cedilla

Originally, the cedilla was not a diacritical mark. Rather, the C with cedilla developed from the so-called Visigothic Z, which was widespread on the Iberian Peninsula and in southern France. Its upper loop was enlarged and reinterpreted as a C, while the lower loop became a smaller appendage, the cedilla.

use

A C / c with cedilla ( Ç / ç ) occurs in Romance languages (e.g. French , Portuguese , Catalan ), but also in Dutch , Albanian , Azerbaijani and Turkish . In some cases, it is also exported directly from French into other languages ​​(e.g. English façade ).

The function of the sign differs depending on the language. In French (and thus also English), Catalan, Portuguese and Dutch, it has the function of changing the pronunciation of the letter "c": A ç is not used as [k] in front of the vowels a, o and u, but as [s ] pronounced, exactly as c is pronounced before e and i. In old Spanish , Old Occitan and Venetian it differs from the normal soft c and was and is as [⁠ ts ⁠] spoken.

In Turkish, on the other hand, the cedilla under the C turns a softly spoken [dʒ] into a hard [tʃ]. In Albanian, the ç is also pronounced as [tʃ], whereas a normals c is pronounced as [ts].

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

A S / s with cedilla ( Ş / ş is) in Turkish, Azerbaijani and other Turkic languages for the sound [⁠ ʃ ⁠] .

On websites with Romanian text you often see “ Ş ” and “ Ţ ” with cedilla. However, the correct character forms in Romanian text are “ Ș ” and “ Ț ”, with a comma underneath . This sub- comma is called Virguliță (svw. Small comma) in Romanian .

In Latvian the cedilla is used with the letters G, K, L, N and in some traditions also R ( Ģ ģ, Ķ ķ, Ļ ļ, Ņ ņ, Ŗ ŗ). The correct form is actually a comma below (or above - ģ). It denotes a softening (Latvian: mīkstinājuma zīme), d. H. the pronunciation of the letter becomes softer (ņ = gn, ļ = gl of Italian, etc.).

The Marshallese language earlier used the letters L, M, N and O with cedilla (Ļļ, M̧m ̧, Ņņ, O̧o ̧). In the current orthography, a point is placed under the letter instead ( ḷ, ṃ, ṇ, ọ).

Character encoding

In Unicode is U + 0327 COMBINING CEDILLA, so for example a lowercase c with cedilla can be coded as U + 0063 U + 0327, in HTML çor ç, the result looks like this: “ç”. The sign of a single cedilla, which is much less needed, is U + 00B8 CEDILLA, in HTML ¸, the result looks like this: "¸".

For the letters that are most often used with cedilla, Unicode also defines encodings for the precomposed letter, e.g. B. U + 00E7 LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA, "ç", in HTML & ccedil ;. With Unicode Version 3.0 in 1999, additional Unicode characters were introduced for the correct display of Romanian letters with commas .

Input with the keyboard

With the German standard keyboard layout E1 and the keyboard layout T2 , the character is entered as Alt Gr+ j(rule of thumb: the letter J, like the cedilla, points down to the left). This combination acts as a dead key , i.e. H. must be entered before the basic letter.

On the keyboards of French-speaking countries, the ç must be entered directly as a lowercase letter. The combination Shift + 4 must be pressed on the Swiss keyboard . On the French and Belgian keyboards it is the first character assignment on the 9 key. It is therefore not necessary to press the shift key. Direct entry of the capital letter Ç is not possible on any of these keyboards. How to proceed on keyboards that have no key reserved for ç and Ç is described in the following sections.

Windows

Under Windows, letters combined with the cedilla can be created with Alt + number on the number pad:

  • Alt + 128 → Ç
  • Alt + 135 → ç

Most programs only allow these two letters (if the code page Windows-1252 is set to "Western European"). In some programs (e.g. the character table ) you can also enter Unicode values ​​above 255, for example:

  • Alt + 350 → Ş
  • Alt + 351 → ş

If you are using Microsoft Word , you can also write the cedilla with the key combination Ctrl + comma, followed by a capital or small c.

X on Unix / Linux

Under X , the cedilla can be combined with some letters in the German keyboard layout (with dead keys ) using AltGr + accent or entered as a compound letter + comma.

Mac OS X

In Mac OS X you use the key combination Alt + C (+ Shift key for a Ç).

Chrome OS

Under Chrome OS, Alt Gr+ represents ´the dead key for the cedilla in the German keyboard layout . So "Ķ" is written: Alt Gr+ ´, K. For ç and Ç, it is enough to simplify things ´.

TeX and LaTeX

TeX and LaTeX can represent any characters with cedilla. There is also the command \c c(or written differently \c{c}) in the text mode for the text sentence , which generates a ç.

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Cedille  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Trudel Meisenburg: Romanesque writing systems in comparison. A diachronic study. Narr 1996, p. 63