A spelling reform in the 18th century eliminated ç from Spanish orthography. Andalusian, Canarian, and Latin American Spanish pronounced ç as /s/, or as /z/ before a voiced consonant. Middle Castilian Spanish pronounced ç as /θ/, or as /ð/ before a voiced consonant. Early Modern Spanish used the letter ç to represent either /θ/ or /s/ before /a/, /o/, and /u/ in much the same way as Modern Spanish uses the letter z.It also represented /d͡z/ allophonically when it occurred before a voiced consonant. Old Spanish used ç to represent /t͡s/ before /a/, /o/, /u/.Another grammar written around 1700 would say that the letter ç sounds like /s/, which shows a phonetic evolution that is still valid today. According to a Portuguese grammar written in 1550, the letter ç had the sound of /dz/ around that time. Modern Portuguese does not use the character at the beginning or at the end of a word (the nickname for Conceição is São, not Ção). Portuguese ( cê-cedilha, cê de cedilha or cê cedilhado): it is used before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩: taça ('cup'), braço ('arm'), açúcar ('sugar').Occitan ( ce cedilha): torçut ('twisted'), çò ('this'), ça que la ('nevertheless'), braç ('arm'), brèç ('cradle'), voraç ('voracious').French does not use the character at the end of a word but it can occur at the beginning of a word (e.g., ça, 'that'). French ( cé cédille): français ('French'), garçon ('boy'), façade ('frontage'), grinçant ('squeaking'), leçon ('lesson'), reçu ('received' ).A well-known word with this character is Barça, a common Catalan clipping of Futbol Club Barcelona. Some examples of words with ⟨ç⟩ are amenaça ('menace'), torçat ('twisted'), xoriço ('chorizo'), forçut ('strong'), dolç ('sweet') and caça ('hunting'). Known as ce trencada ('broken C') in this language, where it can be used before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or at the end of a word. In many languages, ⟨ç⟩ represents the "soft" sound / s/ where a ⟨c⟩ would normally represent the "hard" sound / k/. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, / ç/ represents the voiceless palatal fricative. Spanish has not used the symbol since an orthographic reform in the 18th century (which replaced ç with the now-devoiced z), but it was adopted for writing other languages. Later, /t͡s/ changed into / s/ in many Romance languages and dialects. The phoneme originated in Vulgar Latin from the palatalization of the plosives / t/ and / k/ in some conditions. It was first used for the sound of the voiceless alveolar affricate / t͡s/ in Old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter z ( Ꝣ). It is often retained in the spelling of loanwords from any of these languages in English, Basque, Dutch, Spanish and other Latin script spelled languages. It is also occasionally used in Crimean Tatar and in Tajik (when written in the Latin script) to represent the / d͡ʒ/ sound. Romance languages that use this letter include Catalan, French, Friulian, Ligurian, Occitan, and Portuguese as a variant of the letter C. Ç or ç ( C-cedilla) is a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Manx, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish, Zazaki, and Romance alphabets. For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).