# French: Latin c to French ch



## dihydrogen monoxide

Why does French have ch where all other languages have c and particularly when the word comes from Latin? Let me demonstrate:

English: cat French: chat
English: castle French: chateau
English: chapel French: chapelle (It. should be capelle)
English: chamber French: chambre (Lat. camera is the source).

How did Latin c become ch in French?


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## arsham

Just a first guess:
French is not directly derived from Latin as preserved in the extent Roman texts, it's derived from the spoken Latin of the Roman soldiers coloured with the Celtic language native to France, the Gaulish. This mixture must have resulted in consonental shifts like palatalization of velars!


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## Kevin Beach

I agree that the change is based on sound, not writing.

The shift from K to Ch is easy to understand in three stages: K > Kh > Sh > Ch.

K > Kh is known in BrE, on Merseyside, and in some IrE accents.

Kh > Sh is evident in some German accents.

Sh > Ch is known in OE>MidE>ModE.

And the direct mutation of K > Ch is blatant in many changes from Latin to Italian.


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## arsham

Kevin Beach said:


> I agree that the change is based on sound, not writing.
> 
> The shift from K to Ch is easy to understand in three stages: K > Kh > Sh > Ch.
> 
> K > Kh is known in BrE, on Merseyside, and in some IrE accents.
> 
> Kh > Sh is evident in some German accents.
> 
> Sh > Ch is known in OE>MidE>ModE.
> 
> And the direct mutation of K > Ch is blatant in *many changes from Latin to Italian*.


 
ya! It crossed my mind as well, though I didn't mention it!N>B> the French "ch" is pronounced sh, so the shift is from a velar to a postalveolar! (one step less!)


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## berndf

Kevin Beach said:


> K > Kh is known in BrE, on Merseyside, and in some IrE accents.


I have never heared that the sound shift from [k] to [tʃ] went through [x] or [ç] in any Romance language. This might well be my ignorance. Do you have any references?



Kevin Beach said:


> Sh > Ch is known in OE>MidE>ModE.


In late Old French back from [tʃ] to [ʃ] which is as Arsham wrote the current pronunciation of "ch" in French. The English "ch" does not exist in modern French.


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## CapnPrep

The stages of palatalization of initial or post-consonantal_ k_ before _a_ in French are generally presented as follows:k > k' > t' > tš (> š)​(The apostrophe indicates palatalization, not aspiration.) The palatalization steps happened around the 5th-6th centuries; the simplification of the affricate happened around the 12th century.

The same thing happened to _g_ (gamba > jambe, gaudia > joie), but the result was the same as for _g_ before a front vowel (dž, later simplified to ž), so it somehow seems less interesting.


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## Outsider

berndf said:


> I have never heared that the sound shift from [k] to [tʃ] went through [x] or [ç] in any Romance language. This might well be my ignorance. Do you have any references?


The _k'_ that CapnPrep mentions was probably a palatal consonant. In Romansh, the sound [c] is still used today.


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## 89ten

This shows how quick a language can change. French cent and many centum initial c words followed by e took the same route and became palatalized. I am not sure if this happened with Iberian languages to some degree.
  And how did it actually work. The timeframe is fairly recent so I hope some competing theories have been put forward. Influence of writing is out of question but why Gallic speakers in contact with Latin begun to palatalize words. It could be enough to introduce a few words, influential and frequent in everyday speech to overrun the general rule, for example the very cent was the first one spoken with palletized c, then other not yet palletized c-words followed and surrendered to the new rule. That’s logical as even in numeral minority words that are used rarely don’t have equal impact and eventually will have to take the shift.


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## Cilquiestsuens

I think the palatal pronounciation of *k *in French is quite typical... even today

Historically a number of dialects (especially champenois and normand, if I remember well) were the ones having the most (*ch*) pronounciations and sometimes words from these dialects have prevailed into standard French while other words have come from non palatalized dialects. This explains : *cheval* vs. *cavalcade* ; *campagne* vs. *Champagne*, etc...

What amazes me is that the palatal pronounciation of k' before an 'a' is still very common especially in the least educated strata of French society.... *"T'as qu'à fermer ta gueule ! "* (the underlined *'qu'à'* is pronounced halfway between '*ka*' and '*tcha*'). Needless to say this pronounciation is considered quite vulgar.


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## 89ten

That’s what I thought initially, that this shift must have been a result of local development that spread itself through France then effect of widespread influence of Gallic phonetics. Still the question of Champenois and Normandy, the regions from where the palatal shift occurred must have had some distinct phonetic features that put them aside from the rest of Gallic France. Perhaps lexical too, in addition..


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## Outsider

Outsider said:


> The _k'_ that CapnPrep mentions was probably a palatal consonant. In Romansh, the sound [c] is still used today.


Hmm, the most recent version of the Wikipedia article on Romansh does not confirm this...


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> Hmm, the most recent version of the Wikipedia article on Romansh does not confirm this...


I wouldn't worry.

Romansh/Ladin has so many dialects, some of them spoken by just a few hundred people who, on top of all, are all perfectly bilingual. You can probably prove whatever you want with Romansh/Ladin. And the standard described in Wikipedia (Rumantsch Grischun) is completely artificial, created some 25 years ago to be able to have Romansh literature, newspapers, TV, etc.


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## J.F. de TROYES

Cilquiestsuens said:


> I think the palatal pronounciation of *k *in French is quite typical... even today
> 
> Historically a number of dialects (especially champenois and normand, if I remember well) were the ones having the most (*ch*) pronounciations and sometimes words from these dialects have prevailed into standard French while other words have come from non palatalized dialects. This explains : *cheval* vs. *cavalcade* ; *campagne* vs. *Champagne*, etc...


 
This process of palatalization is thought to have taken place in wide areas of Northen and Central Gaul, except for the Province of Picardy and some more Northern areas, probably because German and Saxon speakers were prevailing there. In Picardy _*cheval* _was pronounced _*[k(*__*ǝ)val]*_ and the famous mining disaster in Courrières (1906- Province du Hainaut) resulted in the elimination of the usual French word _*réchappés*_ that was replaced by the Northern dialectal form _*rescapés*_ ( survivors ), widely spred out by Press reports, the only word used in standard French from then on.

The non-palatalization of _*cavalcade*_ is rather due to its Italian origin : _*cavalcata*_ < _*cavalcare*_ ,to ride a horse, _*chevaucher*_ in French (Petit-Robert dictionary)
Agreed for _*campagne*_ ( or its older form *campaigne *) prevailing over the standard form_* champagne*_, unless it was borrowed from "la langue d'oc".


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## Forero

I think the (Northern) French version of _a_ must have been in a sense more palatal than for example the Iberian version.  Apparently, when the _c_ of French _ce_/_ci_ was changing from /tsh/ or /ts/ to /s/, the _c_ of French _ca_ was changing from /k/ or /kj/ to /tsh/.  This /tsh/ later later reduced to /sh/.

French _a_ was so much like _e_ that it tended to become _e_ wherever it was not blocked by a following consonant in the same syllable.  The variety of _e_ (_é_ or _è_) it ultimately became depends on whether the modern French syllable is open or closed (a consonant followed by _e muet_ closes a preceding _e_ syllable).


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## CapnPrep

Forero said:


> I think the (Northern) French version of _a_ must have been in a sense more palatal than for example the Iberian version.  Apparently, when the _c_ of French _ce_/_ci_ was changing from /tsh/ or /ts/ to /s/, the _c_ of French _ca_ was changing from /k/ or /kj/ to /tsh/.  This /tsh/ later later reduced to /sh/.


Palatalization before _e/i_ took place about two hundred years before palatalization before _a_, and (for anyone who is wondering about the different systems of phonetic notation used in this thread) the steps that you outline are the same as those already discussed above.

Nobody knows why _k_ and _g_ palatalized before _a_ in French. Zink hypothesizes a "tightening" (_resserrement_) of _a_ to _ä_ in the 5th century, without ever saying what "_ä_" is supposed to mean… This was supposedly enough to cause the palatalization of _ka/ga_. What you say about _a_ turning into _e_ in open syllables is a bit misleading, because this only happened for _a_ preceded by a palatal consonant (the so-called "loi de Bartsch"). Otherwise, stressed _a_ remained /a/, and unstressed _a_ turned into what they call "_e central_" (something like /ɘ/ or /ə/, quite different from the front vowel /e/) is true for *stressed* open syllables only.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> ...of _a_ to _ä_ in the 5th century, without ever saying what "_ä_" is supposed to mean…


Probably [æ], i.e. half way between _<a>_ and _<è>_. Probably from the German letter "ä" which is a stylization of "ae" and pronounced [æ].


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## JeanDeSponde

dihydrogen monoxide said:


> Why does French have ch where all other languages have c and particularly when the word comes from Latin? Let me demonstrate:
> English: cat French: chat
> English: castle French: chateau
> English: chapel French: chapelle (It. should be capelle)
> English: chamber French: chambre (Lat. camera is the source).



Actually the English _Cat, Castle, Cattle, Cabbage_ come from Norman (French dialect in Normandy, at the times of Guillaume the Conqueror), not directly from latin. This dialect was closer to Latin pronunciation than were other dialects.
Had Guillaume been from Paris, English _chats_ would chase _chattle_ in _Chastles_...
Now, the English language is made of many chronological strata (as any other language), and _chapel_, _chamber_ had been imported at a later time - or from another part of France...


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## J.F. de TROYES

89ten said:


> This shows how quick a language can change. French cent and many centum initial c words followed by e took the same route and became palatalized. I am not sure if this happened with Iberian languages to some degree.


 
The [k] and [g] followed by e/i are thought to have been palatalized very early, as far back as the spoken Late Latin  during the 3rd century  or before in all Romania. The Classic Latin _civitatem_ [kivitatem]  was then pronounced [tʃivitate] as in Italian _cittá._  Later it evolved differently from a Romance language to another. The Old-Spanishform _çiervo ,_ pronounced [tsyerβo] _(<_ Latin _cervum_) is attested. and became _ciervo_.


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## roboir

89ten said:


> This shows how quick a language can change. French cent and many centum initial c words followed by e took the same route and became palatalized. I am not sure if this happened with Iberian languages to some degree.
> And how did it actually work. The timeframe is fairly recent so I hope some competing theories have been put forward. Influence of writing is out of question but why Gallic speakers in contact with Latin begun to palatalize words. It could be enough to introduce a few words, influential and frequent in everyday speech to overrun the general rule, for example the very cent was the first one spoken with palletized c, then other not yet palletized c-words followed and surrendered to the new rule. That’s logical as even in numeral minority words that are used rarely don’t have equal impact and eventually will have to take the shift.



Well, in Irish Gaelic, the palatilisation of hard latin _c_ [k] is a tendency.
For example _certo_, as in "certain" = Modern Gaelic _ceart_ [khjart], so perhaps this was a common feature of most Celtic language groups (not just Goidelic or Brythonic), including those spoken in Gaul, Iberia and Northern Italy.


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## Lacuzon

Hi,

I'm not a specialist. Nevertheless, as far as I know the fact that c began ch is due to a Germanic people : les Francs. Then, years ago, Charlemagne decided to reintroduce some words "directly" from Latin. Thoses ones often are more scientific or more elevated.

Latin: camera -> French: Chambre and camériste and caméra (was called chambre noire at the beginning)
Latin: canis-> French: chien and canin
Latin: capra-> French: chèvre and caprin

And so on... Either not modify by les Francs either reintroduced by Charlemagne or by François Ier (he did too if I remember right).

That's what I have been told.


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## roboir

Lacuzon,

If this is the case in Northern Gaul with its Germanic influence, then how do we account for Hispania?

Did the Romano-Celtiberian natives suffer a transformation due to the Visigoths?


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## CapnPrep

Lacuzon said:


> Nevertheless, as far as I know the fact that c began ch is due to a Germanic people : les Francs.


As I said above, no one knows for sure why _k_ palatalized before _a_. And there was not necessarily any external cause, although Celtic and Germanic influences have been hypothesized. Your Frankish theory is a bit doubtful because the Frankish language itself did not seem to have this palatalization of _k_, nor do the Oïl languages (e.g. Normand and Picard) north and west of the Joret Line, even though these areas were also occupied by the Franks.



roboir said:


> If this is the case in Northern Gaul with its Germanic influence, then how do we account for Hispania?


What is there to account for? The palatalization of _k_ before _a_ is not found in Ibero-Romance varieties.


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## roboir

What is there to account for? The palatalization of _k_ before _a_ is not found in Ibero-Romance varieties.[/QUOTE]

Ok, but the 'ch' [tʃ ] digraph exists in Spanish (and Aragonese, and some varieties of Catalán).. maybe that was not the result of palatalisation of initial 'c', but then how else would it have come into being?


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## CapnPrep

roboir said:


> maybe that was not the result of palatalisation of initial 'c', but then how else would it have come into being?


Two main sources: 


palatalization of syllable-initial _t_ following a syllable-final _k_ (or sometimes _l_): o*kt*o > _ocho_, no*kt*e > _noche_, mu*lt*u > _mucho_
palatalization of the groups _fl_, _kl_, _pl_ after another consonant: am*pl*u > _ancho_, in*fl*are > _hinchar_
As you can see, these have nothing to do with the Gallo-Romance development under discussion here.


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## roboir

Thanks for the clarification, CapnPrep.

It's a pleasure learning from you.


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