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

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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."

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[-] 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

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