# How did the letter "C" come to have both "k" and "s" phonetic values? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 9, 2006, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-letter-c-come-to-have-both-k-and-s-phonetic-values/339119 "2006-01-09T06:37:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-letter-c-come-to-have-both-k-and-s-phonetic-values/339119/1 "2006-01-09T06:37:19Z")
The Wikipedia article – [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C) – says only, “The Romance languages and English have a common feature inherited from Vulgar Latin where C takes on either a “hard” or “soft” value depending on the following vowel.” But why? In classical Latin, “c” always was pronounced “k” – wasn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-letter-c-come-to-have-both-k-and-s-phonetic-values/339119/2 "2006-01-09T06:40:50Z")
And come to think of it, why does the Latin alphabet even **have** a letter “k”? Why did they need it? Even weirder – what good is “q”? ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-letter-c-come-to-have-both-k-and-s-phonetic-values/339119/3 "2006-01-09T06:49:39Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And come to think of it, why does the Latin alphabet even **have** a letter “k”? Why did they need it? K is easier than C. They got K from the Greek kappa, which has the same shape and sound. Since it comes in the same place in the alphabet, presumably they got C from the Greek gamma, which has a somewhat similar shape but a different sound. So wouldn’t the question be, why did the Romans need C when they already had K? ---
**Author:** ![Lama\_Pacos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Lama\_Pacos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lama_Pacos)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-letter-c-come-to-have-both-k-and-s-phonetic-values/339119/4 "2006-01-09T06:58:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Since it comes in the same place in the alphabet, presumably they got C from the Greek gamma, which has a somewhat similar shape but a different sound. I don’t know about the actual history, but our hard C and G sounds are actually very similar-- the former is an unvoiced velar stop and the latter a voiced velar stop. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-letter-c-come-to-have-both-k-and-s-phonetic-values/339119/5 "2006-01-09T09:11:13Z")
K also does the _kkk_ sound. S also does the _sss_ sound. But only C does the _ch_ sound. ---
**Author:** ![sundog66](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@sundog66](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sundog66)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-letter-c-come-to-have-both-k-and-s-phonetic-values/339119/6 "2006-01-09T09:12:01Z")
I think that the OP is correct that at one point, Latin “c” was always pronounced [k]. What I assume happened is that at some point, there was a conditioned sound change in which the [k] sound became a [s] sound in certain environments, namely, before front vowels (I think). Front vowels in Latin included what is represented as “i” and “e”. So we get: city cinder cite (yeah, I know I should have one) cent cellar etc. with the [s] sound, and all the other environments: clamor crisis came come cure etc. with the [k] sound. I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated than that (and actually, it could be that [k] first became “ch” and then [s] given that in Italian, the combinations “ci” and “ce” are always pronounced with a “ch” sound), but it’s a start. Alright, I think that’s enough armchair speculation. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2006, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-letter-c-come-to-have-both-k-and-s-phonetic-values/339119/7 "2006-01-09T16:15:23Z")
Originally in Latin, “K” sounded like /k/, and “C” sounded like /g/ (which is why in inscriptions you see abbreviations like “Cn.” for “Gnaeus”. Eventually, for some reason, “C” became used for both /k/ and /g/, and so the letter “G” was invented to disambiguate the two. “Q” was originally a Semitic letter pronounced in the back of the throat, but by the time it got to Latin via Greek, it sounded like an ordinary /k/. Latin probably kept it around representing the sound /kw/ to disambiguate pairs like “cui” and “qui”. Before front vowels, “C” in Latin began to be palatalized (pronounced with a /y/ offglide) in all Latin dialects except for those on Sardinia. This wound up giving various reflexes in different Romance languages: Italian, Sicilian, Romanian, Dalmatian, etc. pronounced it like English /ch/; French originally pronounced it like /ts/ and then changed it to /s/ (whence the English sound); Spanish pronounced it like /ts/, changed that to /th/, and in some areas, changed it further to /s/.