7
What's up with Z's and ç's in this 17th century Spanish text? (hexbear.net)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by FunkyStuff@hexbear.net to c/linguistics@lemmy.ml
4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Was just randomly looking at https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/oraculo-manual-y-arte-de-prudencia--0/html/fedb3724-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_2.html and was caught off guard by the use of the letter ç to represent the sound of z. Also noticed a few words spelled with an i instead of y like how it says "rei" instead of "rey."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] davel@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I don’t know, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s to distinguish between a fricative and/or voiced sound and a non-fricative/non-voiced one. Probably between two of these three:

  • the English z sound
  • the English soft th sound
  • the English s sound

 
See also ç in the related languages: Catalan, Occitan, and French.

[-] headword@lingo.lol 4 points 3 weeks ago

@davel @FunkyStuff The letter ç has an interesting history. It is a variant of the letter z, not the letter c. The letter z in the Visigothic script had very curly ends: ꝣ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigothic/_script

Some (Portugguese) place names are also written with ç or z in different languages: Açores / Azores, Moçambique / Mozambique

An illustration of a visigothic z (ꝣ) in comparison with a modern c-cedille (ç)

[-] asdasd201@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

And here we are in Turkey using it to show "ch" as in "channel" sound.

this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
7 points (100.0% liked)

Linguistics

948 readers
1 users here now

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
davel@lemmy.ml