r/linguisticshumor • u/NebularCarina I hāpī nei au i te vānaŋa Rapa Nui (ko au he repa Hiva). • Feb 17 '25

Phonetics/Phonology Pronunciation of <c>

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u/NebularCarina I hāpī nei au i te vānaŋa Rapa Nui (ko au he repa Hiva). Feb 17 '25

Example languages/dialects:

  • /k/: Classical Latin
  • /s/: French
  • /tʃ/: Italian, Standard Indonesian (Malay)
  • /ts/: Polish, Czech
  • /dʒ/: Turkish
  • /tsʰ/: Standard Mandarin (Pinyin orthography)
  • /θ/: European Spanish
  • /ð/: Standard Fijian
  • /ʕ/: Somali
  • /ǀ/: Zulu, Xhosa

Honorable mentions:

  • /kʰ/: Scottish Gaelic
  • /ʑ/: Tatar
  • /ʔ/: Bukawa, Yabem

Feel free to leave any other ones in the comments!

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u/ReggieLFC Feb 18 '25

The Welsh alphabet used to omit <c>.

They had <k> for /k/ and <s> for /s/. Easy!

But in 1567 that changed due to an issue with the sorts (letter pieces) required by the printing press, so today there’s no <k> in the Welsh alphabet instead.

This webpage explains: https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/welshcelt.htm