Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)
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First published 1941 (SND Vol. II). Includes material from the 1976 supplement.
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.
Quotation dates: 1817
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C, n., letter of alphabet.
1. The form of the letter C can be traced back through the Roman alphabet to the Greek consonant gamma (Γ) = Eng. g as in gun. In earlier Latin it stood for two sounds, viz. the breathed and the voiced back stops, phonetically [k] and [g]. Some time in the third century b.c., C in Latin was restricted to the sound of [k] and its modified form G represented the voiced back stop as in Latin gaudeo. The Roman alphabet, including the two letters C and G, was used by the Gaelic missionaries and adopted from them by O.E. writers. The name of the letter is now as in Eng. [si], but earlier [se] (Sc. 1761 Magopico (1810) 1, say; ne.Sc. 1874 W. Gregor Olden Time 39, ceh; Ags. 1920 D. H. Edwards Muirside 216, say). See also Ah-Bay-Say.Dmb. 1817 J. Walker Poems 71:
In days o' yore we held it sae, Whan fouk scarce read the A, B, C.
2. In Sc. orthography C [k] is used: (1) at the beginning of a syllable before the vowels a, o, u, e.g. ca', caur, collie, coom, couk, cutty; (2) before the consonants l, r, w, e.g. clyte [kləit], crine [krəin], cweel [kwil]. Note also scr as in scrieve [skri:v] and scl as in sclate [sklet].
3. Ck at the end of a syllable after a short vowel is a digraph = [k], e.g. vrack, geck, bicl, bock, ruck.
4. C before the letters e, i, has the sound of s. The words in this case are generally of Romance origin, as censor, ceevil, cedent, ciel.
5. Ch is a consonantal digraph for a sound now lost in St.Eng. and found in Sc. generally in medial or final position. It is represented in O.E. by the symbol h. In Sc. two varieties are found: (1) [x] a breathed back fricative after the vowels a, o, u, as in Sc. lach, loch, eneuch, rauchle; (2) [] a breathed front fricative after the vowels ei, ie, ee and i [i and ɪ], e.g. Sc. driech, feech, heich, sick [dri, fi, hi, sɪ]. In s.Sc. [x] is pronounced with lip-rounding when the consonant is in contact with a, o, u, as in Ger. auch. See P.L.D. §111.
