Does the letter 'C' make any sound that cannot be made by other letters?
"Cat" could be spelled "Kat," "Cinder" could be spelled "Sinder," and "Watch" could be spelled "Watsh."
Edit:
An excerpt from a comment by Kosmonaut:
There is no difference between ["ch" and "tch"]; both are /tʃ/. Thus, "witch" and "which" are pronounced exactly the same: [wɪtʃ]. (Actually some Southern American dialects pronounce "which" as [ʍɪtʃ], but that is only a difference in the "w" sound, not the /tʃ/.)
This is not a bad remark.
All Germanic cognates of cat are indeed spelled with a 'k' (from P.Gmc. *kattuz, O.Fris. katte, O.N. köttr, Du. kat, O.H.G. kazza, Ger. Katze). The English word is spelled with a 'c' under the influence of Late Latin (cattus). See step 3 below.
All Germanic cognates of cinder are indeed spelled with an 's': P.Gmc. *sindran (cf. O.S. sinder, O.N. sindr, M.L.G., M.Du. sinder, O.H.G. sintar, Ger. Sinter. Initial s- changed to c- under influence of Fr. cendre "ashes. See step 4 below.
The letter 'C' has already disappeared from a lot of words.
Here are a few examples of the evolution of the spelling of some Old English words.
Of course there is no single cause to all these changes. And even summarising them in a small answer is a huge challenge.
But there is an interesting section in the wikipedia article about the 'C' letter.
Yet I'd like to add a few background considerations.
After the Anglo Saxon conquest of Britain in the 5th century, texts (very few have actually come down to us) were all written in the Runic Alphabet, because that was the alphabet in use in Germany (it had actually been borrowed from the Etruscan who add taken it from the Greeks who... who... Proto-Canaanite/Egyptians). In other words the Latin alphabet introduced by the Roman occupation fell into complete oblivion.
When Pope Gregory sent out Augustine to convert the famously "non angli, sed angeli" heathens, the dominant writing system shifted back to the Latin alphabet. Within a few decades England quickly raised to the most culturally prominent country in Europe (its lavishly illuminated Bibles and other religious manuscripts can still be found in many European museums and libraries). But the language used for these masterpieces was still Latin. There are very few words of English in these texts.
Then the Vikings raided the monasteries to plunder all their riches and in the process they killed a large proportion of scholars. As a result, when King Ælfred endeavoured to rekindle the light of English culture, he started writing texts in "Old Ænglisc" instead of Latin. For this purpose he naturally used the Latin alphabet with however the addition of a few runic characters (among which the 'ð' and the 'þ' for the sound 'th'). The 'c' was used for the sound /k/, 'cw' for /kw/ (queen), 'ce' and 'ci' for [tʃ] (child) and 'sc' for [ʃ] (ship). These conventions were inspired from Vulgar Latin.
In Middle English (in the wake of the Norman invasion), under the influence of the French spelling system, English underwent a spelling reform which affected many words containing the letter 'c'.
Yes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it is the only one which changes from a "k"-sound to an "s"-sound when adding certain suffixes to the end of words like electric and plastic.
So if, say, plastic were changed to the more phonetically appropriate plastik, the derivation of plasticity would become (slightly) obscured, because, as far as I know, sounds represented by "k" at the end of a word never become "s", regardless of what sound comes after.
Such are the joys of the English alpha-, er, alfabet.
"C" is a letter and is used to make words. I am not sure what you are asking, here. A few thoughts:
I remember seeing a list somewhere that pointed out the different behaviors of vowels near a c, k, ck or other variations. But in terms of 'C' technically serving a unique purpose, it certainly does now since it is the third letter of the alphabet and is used when writing hexadecimal numbers.
The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité would seem obligatory.
Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say — said, pay — paid, laid but plaid.
Read the rest on the page behind the link. Here is part of the poem transcribed to the International Phonetic Alphabet:
British pronunciation (which the poem was meant for):
ˌdɪəɹɪst ˈkɹiːʧəɹ ɪn kɹɪ.ˈeɪʃn̩
ˌstʌdɪ.ɪŋ ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ pɹəˌnʌnsɪ.ˈeɪʃn̩
ˌaɪ wɪl ˈtiːʧ jʊ ɪn maɪ ˈvɜːs ˈsaʊndz laɪk ˈkɔːps ˈkɔː ˈhɔːs ənd ˈwɜːsˌaɪ wɪl ˈkiːp jʊ ˈsuːzɪ ˈbɪzɪ
ˌmeɪk jə ˈhɛd wɪð ˈhiːt ɡɹəʊ ˈdɪzɪ
ˈtɪəɹ ɪn ˌaɪ jə ˈdɹɛs wɪl ˈtɛə ˈkwɪə ˌfɛə ˈsɪə ˈhɪə maɪ ˈpɹɛəˈpɹeɪ kənˈsəʊl jə ˈlʌvɪŋ ˈpəʊ.ɪt
ˈmeɪk maɪ ˈkəʊt ˌlʊk ˈnjuː ˌdɪə ˈsəʊ ɪt
ˌʤʌst kəmˈpɛə ˈhɑːt ˈhɪəɹ ənd ˈhɜːd
ˈdaɪz ənd ˈdaɪ.ət ˈlɔːd ənd ˈwɜːdˈsɔːd ənd ˈswɔːd ɹɪˈteɪn ənd ˈbɹɪtn̩
ˈmaɪnd ðə ˈlætə ˌhaʊ ɪts ˈɹɪtn̩
ˈmeɪd həz ˈnɒt ðə ˈsaʊnd əv ˈbæd
ˈseɪ ˈsɛd ˈpeɪ ˈpeɪd ˈleɪd bət ˈplæd
I think your case for watch -> watsh is mistaken.
The end of watch has a short ch sound. If I were drunk or particularly tired then I might pronounce it wahsh, but in trying to pronounce watsh in a normal state I end up practically ignoring the t all together.
Also, I find that if one tries to keep silent letters in mind when pronouncing words, then the pronunciation is distinct from if the letter were not there at all. So science sounds different (to me) to sience, for example.
You've answered youself. Ch creates - among other pronunciations of this digraph - the sound tsh' which cannot be created otherwise. Like cheese, China and lots of other words. Sometimes it's used with t before, like in watch, scotch thus putting more stress on the t part of the sound.
