Talk:Cedilla

Alternate origin of cedilla?

Well, I was going over the Greek alphabet a few days ago, and I noticed something. Doesn't it seem quite strange how the final form of the Greek sigma, ς, looks unusually like our c-cedilla, ç. They are both pronounced almost the same. Plus the Greek script has had quite some influences on our Latin script. I hypothesize that ς could've been brought to the attention of the Romans via Syracuse, you know, Sicily was once a Greek land. Now, I know about that one Visigoth letter and all that, so please don't bother telling me about that. But, alas, if this can be disproved, it may be how we have commas or even ogoneks instead of cedillas in diacritics, especially with the Slavic/Baltic groups of languages and Romanian. And maybe Turkish too ... well, no because they just "copied off" of "Western" ideas, in the case of the scripts, replaced the Arabic scripts with the Latin, which I think was a very wise move. Otherwise, who would've been able to read Ottoman Turkish? It used, sorry if I'm exaggerating, many Arabic characters of which almost half of the characters are obsolete in the standard Arabic script today. IlStudioso 06:26, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

@IlStudioso: Coincidence, just as the Cyrillic letter С bears no historical relation to the Latin Alphabet C (it is actually derived from the Lunate sigma, which probably is related to the lowercase Sigma). Hope this helps! ;) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6c44:237f:accb:817a:b773:924f:4df9 (talk) 03:50, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Cedilla shape in Marshallese

In standard printed text they are always cedillas, and their omission or the substitution of comma below and dot below diacritics are nonstandard.

I am requesting a reference for that statement as several documents use a detached cedilla, the Marshallese language commission recommended a (non specific) diacritic below. The Marshallese Language Orthography (Standard Spelling) Act of 2010 applies the rules of the MED (1979), but it is not clear what was meant by cedilla, if there is only one correct shape for the cedilla or if the cedilla can have different shapes as it the case in many languages where it can be both detached or attached depending on the font style. --Moyogo/ (talk) 12:16, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I know what you mean. A comma below is not a cedilla. I have the print version of the MED (1979), and it uses all cedillas, not commas below. The Marshallese alphabet postage stamp series uses only cedillas, not commas below. I even have a copy of the Book of Mormon in Marshallese and it uses only cedillas, not commas below. The Adobe letter definitions for ĻļŅņ were originally defined to use a comma below, but Unicode in 1992 inappropriately conflated these with cedillas. But since these glyphs were to be used for Latvian, most polished fonts show only comma below instead of cedilla for the letters associated with Latvian: ĢģĶķĻļŅņŖŗ. A similar issue arose with Romanian Unicode being assigned letters with cedillas, but these were ruled incorrect as Romanian uses commas below. But since there are other established languages that do use the letters with cedilla (such as Turkish and Gagauz), additional code points were created, so now Unicode supports separate ŞşŢţ and ȘșȚț, with the comma below versions correct for Romanian. The same was not done for Latvian, even though corresponding letters with cedillas do exist in Marshallese. The cedilla and comma below were historically incorrectly conflated by Unicode in 1992, but that does not mean that the comma below is a glyph variant of the cedilla, nor does it necessarily follow that they should be assumed to be so — both diacritics are actually separately encoded as optional combining diacritics. Instead of providing references to prove that they are not glyph variants, it should follow that there should be references to prove that they are actually glyph variants. It should be noted that none of the specially marked letters unique to Marshallese have proper Unicode variants, either because of the Latvian display preference (ĻļŅņ), or because there are no corresponding precomposed glyphs for them (M̧m̧N̄n̄O̧o̧). Theoretically, with properly-designed fonts and font display engines, precombined glyphs aren't necessarily to properly display a writing system. But many common fonts still have no support or only rudimentally crude support for combining diacritics, and most assume any need for ĻļŅņ will be in Latvian and will only display the cedilla letters with comma below glyphs, even if separate letters and combining diacritic characters are used instead (automatically displaying canonically equivalent precomposed glyphs, as MediaWiki's software routinely does). - Gilgamesh (talk) 14:03, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, a comma below is not a cedilla. But in some langauges a cedilla can sometimes have the shape of a comma below or other forms which are close or related to it, which is where the whole confusion comes from. My question is: What shape is correct in Marshallese? What reference says so?

Can the Marshallese cedilla be:

• a half-ring-like cedilla (detached and missing the joining stroke) like in Majuro Library or Willson 2008
• a tick-like cedilla like in PREL publications ([1] and others) or Rudiak-Gould 2004
• a comma-like cedilla like in keyobard stickers
• a cedilla with a connecting stroke (centered, left unconnected under n, and connected to the central stroke of m) like in ņ stamp (which you mentionned) or its 2010 re-edition, or UNGEGN document, or like in MED.
• a cedilla with a connecting stroke (always connected, connected to the rightmost stroke of n or m) like in Everson's proposal for additional characters or Eric Muller's document about cedillas and commas below.

I am looking for references because I have the impression the last form (in Everson's and Muller's documents) is wrong (not attached at the right place), and was based on an interpretation of the Wikipedia article. It seems to me the Marshallese readers have not rejected various forms of the cedilla (as long as a single form is used at one time in a document), none of the references I have found state that there is only one acceptable form. It might be useful to remember that both the Romanian and Latvian modern orthographies started with attached cedillas but have now commas below and have clear rules as to which form is correct . It would be helpful if a Marshallese reference clearly stated what form of the cedilla is correct and which is not. Having on shape in MED and other documents doesn't mean all the other shapes found are incorrect.

--Moyogo/ (talk) 15:04, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I had a look at the MED yesterday. The cedilla is indeed attached to the rightmost stem on most m and n in the Introduction, (pp. xiii-xxxiv) but in the dictionary sections (pp. 1-501) the cedilla is not on the rightmost stem on m nor n but closer to the center stem than to the rightmost one under m and centered under n (in both bold and italic). This is not clear as to wether there is only one acceptable form (meaning one part of the dictionary is correct while the other is not).

I also had a look at the LDS material which I hadn't seen before, and it is consistent with Muller and Everson description. The Book of Mormon is there [2], there are also a lot of other PDF files. --Moyogo/ (talk) 05:48, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I hadn't been keeping up with this discussion. No, I'm not aware of any situation of Marshallese rejecting alternative diacritic shapes. All I know is what is prescribed, and what actually appears in the MED, official postal stamps and in the BoM, and all printed texts in general that I've seen that use this orthography. Note that the MED orthography with cedillas, though now officially adopted, is one of two orthographies in common use — the former official orthography is still commonly used, but gradually being replaced by the new orthography as younger people learn and adopt it. The differences between the two orthographies are detailed at the article on the Marshallese language. - Gilgamesh (talk) 21:36, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

The MED spelling rules have been officially adopted by the RMI in the Marshallese Language Orthography (Standard Spelling) Act, 2010. P.L.2010-45. It had already been adopted by the RMI Ministry of Education before that. The Marshallese Language Orthography Act mentions an amended MED, it would be interested to know what they mean exactly. As I said before the MED itself uses the classic cedilla shape but doesn’t say anything about it’s acceptable shape(s). --Moyogo/ (talk) 10:42, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Request

I'd be interested in an explanation of why ç is used instead of s in French, as to my ears the sounds are often quite similar. Is it for Latin words that no longer sound like they used to due to sound changes?

I've also added a bit more about modernist cedilla designs, which I know have been used in French and other languages quite a bit and I think are worth mentioning. But I'm not a very good French-speaker (my interest in them came through knowledge of font design and internationalisation) and I think it might be nice if someone who is took a look at what I've added. Blythwood (talk) 09:47, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

In fact the sounds of ç and s are not quite similar, but identical in French as well as in Modern Portuguese (in Old Portuguese ç sounded more like a 'ts'). The main reason for using ç in a word instead of s is etymological: it's a way of retaining a spelling that is more similar to the original Latin root: façade <- facies; français <- francus. This explains why modern Spanish no longer uses ç: when they decided for a spelling simplification, all etymological spellings were replaced with phonetic ones. —capmo (talk) 19:57, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Brilliant, that's what I assumed was going on. Would adding that make sense? I think it could be informative/helpful for people with knowledge of a lot of words with Latin roots. Blythwood (talk) 20:20, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think that this could be added to the c cedilla article. But unfortunately I have no references at hand to back that information. If you happen to find some sources on this subject, please go ahead. —capmo (talk) 20:30, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

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