The letter 'C' has two main sounds in English: a hard 'C' (/k/) when followed by 'a', 'o', 'u', or a consonant (like cat, cold, cut), and a soft 'C' (/s/) when followed by 'e', 'i', or 'y' (like cent, city, cycle); it can also make a 'sh' sound in combinations like '-cial' (special) or '-cious' (precious).
The letter “c” in English can have two different sounds: a hard “k” sound, as in “cat”, or a soft “s” sound, as in “cent”. Which sound it makes depends on the letter that follows it. If “c” is followed by “a”, “o”, or “u”, it usually makes the hard “k” sound.
The "Rule of c" covers the pronunciation of the letter "c", indicating when "c" stand for the /s/ sound. The rule is: The letter c represents /s/ before the letters e, i or y; otherwise it represents /k/. And here are several examples to show you how broadly useful this rule actually is.
Silent C words
There are many examples of this, such as science, scissors, scent, ascent, crescent, descent, descend, disciple, scene, obscene, fluorescent, abscess, fascinate, and muscle. The silent C also shows up in a few other weird words such as czar, acquire, indict, and yacht.
Some people are still unfamiliar with the concept of a spelling alphabet, so be sure to explain: “I as in India, S as in Sierra, T as in Tango, or Z as in Zulu.” This will make sense to most people.
Evolution from Visigoth Z to modern Ç. In many languages, ⟨ç⟩ represents the "soft" sound /s/ where a ⟨c⟩ would normally represent the "hard" sound /k/.
Cedilla. The cedilla ( ◌̧ ) (from Spanish cedilla, "little z") is a diacritic of the Latin alphabet. In French, it is used only under the letter c, both in lowercase and uppercase forms: ç, Ç.
"Soft" C -- when c represents the "s" sound.
In front of an e, i, or y, C almost always represents the "s" sound (as in "sister"). Exceptions are very rare, though one or two of them are familiar words.
7 most difficult English words that will let you forget what you wanted to say
The grapheme Ć (minuscule: ć), formed from C with the addition of an acute accent, is used in various languages. It usually denotes [t͡ɕ], the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate, including in phonetic transcription.
Tricky words in English often involve confusing spellings, silent letters, or subtle meaning differences, with examples including homophones like there/their/they're, spelling challenges like accommodate (double letters) and rhythm (no vowels), and usage confusion such as imply vs. infer, bring vs. take, and sight words like was, are, and the that don't follow phonetic rules. These words can trip up both learners and native speakers due to pronunciation discrepancies or similar forms with distinct meanings.
It is very normal for young children to mispronounce these sounds. The usual error is to say “t” in place of “c/k” and “d” in place of “g” (or sometimes “d” in place of both sounds). So, for example, the child will say “tar” for “car” or “dame” for “game”.