It was first used for the sound of the voiceless alveolar affricate/t͡s/ in Old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter z (Ꝣ). The phoneme originated in Vulgar Latin from the palatalization of the plosives /t/ and /k/ in some conditions. Later, /t͡s/ changed into /s/ in many Romance languages and dialects. Spanish has not used the symbol since an orthographic reform in the 18th century (which replaced ç with the now-devoiced z), but it was adopted for writing other languages.
In many languages, ⟨ç⟩ represents the "soft" sound /s/ where a ⟨c⟩ would normally represent the "hard" sound /k/. These include:
Catalan. Known as ce trencada ('broken C') in this language, where it can be used before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or at the end of a word. Some examples of words with ⟨ç⟩ are amenaça ('menace'), torçat ('twisted'), xoriço ('chorizo'), forçut ('strong'), dolç ('sweet') and caça ('hunting'). The only two words starting with ç that can be found in the dictionary are ço ('this') and ça ('here'), which are rarely used, except for some expressions like ço que ('which'). A well-known word with this character is Barça, a common Catalan clipping of Futbol Club Barcelona. When writing by hand, Catalans don't write ç with a cedilla under it, but a symbol similar to a comma, which crosses the c (called trenc).[1] In fact, some scholars like Jesús Alturo claim that ce trencada evolved from combining c and i (written ci) instead of the letter z.[2][1]
French (cé cédille): français ('French'), garçon ('boy'), façade ('frontage'), grinçant ('squeaking'), leçon ('lesson'), reçu ('received' [past participle]). French does not use the character at the end of a word but it can occur at the beginning of a word (e.g., ça, 'that').[3] It is never used in French where C would denote /s/ (before e, i, y) nor before h.
Occitan (ce cedilha): torçut ('twisted'), çò ('this'), ça que la ('nevertheless'), braç ('arm'), brèç ('cradle'), voraç ('voracious'). It can occur at the beginning or end of words.
Portuguese (cê-cedilha, cê de cedilha or cê cedilhado): it is used before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩: taça ('cup'), braço ('arm'), açúcar ('sugar'). Modern Portuguese does not use the character at the beginning or at the end of a word (the nickname for Conceição is São, not Ção). According to a Portuguese grammar written in 1550, the letter ç had the sound of /dz/ around that time. Another grammar written around 1700 would say that the letter ç sounds like /s/, which shows a phonetic evolution that is still valid today.
Old Galician used the ç letter, however it is no longer present in the official norm for the Galician language by the Royal Galician Academy. However, the unofficial norm for the Galician language by the AGAL reclaims the ç as part of the language.
On Albanian, Belgian, European French, Portuguese, Spanish, Swiss, Turkish and Italian keyboards, Ç is directly available as a separate key; however, on most other keyboards, including the US and British keyboard, a combination of keys must be used:
In classic Mac OS and macOS, these are ⌥ Opt+C and ⌥ Opt+⇧ Shift+C for lower- and uppercase, respectively.
In the X Window System and many Unix consoles, one presses sequentially Compose, , and either C or ⇧ Shift+C. Alternatively, one may press AltGr+= and then either C or ⇧ Shift+C.
In Microsoft Windows, these are Alt+0231 or Alt+135 for lowercase and Alt+0199 or Alt+128 for uppercase.
In Microsoft Word, these are Ctrl+, and then either C or ⇧ Shift+C.
