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What's up with Z's and ç's in this 17th century Spanish text? (hexbear.net)
submitted 4 months ago* by 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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[–] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

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.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    @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)

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    • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    maybe it's a memory of the time when spanish had 6+ sibilants. or maybe the author still had more than the 2 (or 3) modern spanish has.

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