C is the third letter in the English alphabet. The C is related to the letter G. The letters exact origins are not certain to us, but some scholars say it is derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting a staff. The C can be very confusing for new comers to the English language, as it is used interchangeably in words where the C is sometimes silent, sometimes sounds like S, Z or K.
C has developed throughout history and has been used in the place of many other letters, mainly K. The origins of the letter may have come from the Greek letter Kappa, which many others believe is K.
The sound of the letter can change, depending on the placement of it and other letters surrounding it. However, originally in the Roman alphabet, it was used and only spoken as the letter K. This has been continued in some of the Celtic languages, such as Irish, Gaelic and Welsh. In the Old English, the letter was only used to represent the letter K and this can be seen with the development of some of the words.
For example, kin would have been written as cyn and broken would have been written as brocen. This developed as the C started to represent other letters, such as S and Z, when used with other letters. The C has an S sound when used in front of vowels. This is something that was brought in during the 10th century. In other languages, the use of the letter C in place for other letters was used much sooner.
The C can be replaced in many worse with the letter S. This often changes the meaning of the word and can also lead to a change in verb or noun. However, the S or C debate also depends on certain English languages. For example, the American English language will use C in the words a lot more often than using S. One example of this is “practice”. This is used for the verb and the noun in the US English, but in the UK English “practice” is the noun (a Doctor’s Medical Practice) while “practise” is used for the verb (to practise something).
There are exceptions to every rule and this is commonly seem in some of the older words, including Celt and soccer. While the general rule would be a softer S sound because of the following vowel, it is actually a harder K sound.
The letter C is also a note in music and is commonly used with a sharp or flat notation afterwards to determine whether it is higher or lower by a semitone. The letter is also used in grade markings and is commonly used for when something is “average”. This means that it is not terrible but there is a lot of improvement that can be used. In the UK GCSEs, a C is the lowest pass mark possible.
The Scrabble tile pouch contains only 2 C, each worth 3 points. The C is relatively easy to place since it is part of many words. It can often be successfully applied to form a new word from an already laying word, for example 'art' can become 'cart', or 'are' can be become 'care'.