Even if you’re only a little bit familiar with the French language, you’re bound to have noticed the slanting dashes the French put above certain vowels. At the very least you’ll know the one from café, right? There are three kinds, called “accents”, and you’ll see them mostly above the letter e but also sometimes with certain other vowels. However, do you know the catch (or hook) beneath the letter c?

This kind of c is called “c cédille” and like the accents above, it serves to indicate how the letter is pronounced. In French, the letter c can be pronounced “hard” like the C in Canada or “soft” like the C in Caesar (who is spelled César in French).

Normally, you pronounce a c the hard way when it is followed by the vowels a, o, or u or a consonant, and the soft way when it is followed by the vowels e or i or the letter y.
However, sometimes you have a soft c before an a, o, or u, and in that case you add the catch to indicate the exceptional pronunciation.
A very common example is the word ça (it/that), used all the time in the French equivalent of “How are you?”, namely “Ça va?” (the common answer to which is “Ça va”). It is also the French title of Stephen King’s novel “It”.

Another common occurrence is in the given name François, derived from “France”, also the French version of the current pope’s chosen name. France had two kings bearing that name in the 16^th century. François II was the grandson of François 1^er, with whom you might be familiar if you’ve been following me on Twitter, as he is an important character in my historic/time travel story.

Now that you know how to pronounce the name of two French kings and a French casual greeting, be advised that you might encounter the letter ç in other languages as well, where the pronunciation rule might be similar or different, for example in Turkish.

A final word: If you want to type the Ç or the ç on your non-French keyboard, hold down the ALT key and type on the number pad 128 for the upper-case and 135 for the lower-case “c cédille”.