Č

C with caron
C with caron
Č č
Usage
Writing system	Latin
Type	alphabetic
Language of origin	Czech
Sound values	[tʃ]; [tɕ];
Alphabetical position	5th
History
Development	Γ γ 𐌂 C c Ċ ċ Č č; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Time period	early 15th century-present
Transliterations	Ç; چ; Ч; च;
Other
Writing direction	Left to right
	This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The grapheme Čč (Latin C with caron, also known as háček in Czech, mäkčeň in Slovak, kvačica in Serbo-Croatian, and strešica in Slovene) is used in various contexts, usually denoting the voiceless postalveolar affricate consonant [t͡ʃ] like the English ch in the word chocolate. It is represented in Unicode as U+010C (uppercase Č) and U+010D (lowercase č).

Origin

The symbol originates with the 15th-century Czech alphabet as introduced by the reforms of Jan Hus. In 1830, it was adopted into Gaj's Latin alphabet, which is used in Serbo-Croatian. It is also used in Macedonian, Slovak, Slovenian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Pomak, and Berber alphabets.^[1]

Uses

In Berber, Karelian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Sorbian, Skolt Sami, and Lakota alphabets, it is the fourth letter of the alphabet. In the Czech, Northern Sami, Belarusian Latin, Lithuanian and Latvian alphabets, the letter is in fifth place. In Slovak, it is the sixth letter of the alphabet. It is also used in Pashto (equivalent to چ), Syriac latinization and Saanich.

It is equivalent to Ч in Cyrillic and can be used in Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Serbian, and Bulgarian romanisations. It features more prominently in the Latin alphabets or transliterations of Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian. The letter Č can also be substituted by Ç in the transliterations of Turkic languages, either using the Latin script or the Cyrillic script.

/Č/ is also used in Americanist phonetic notation.

Č is the similar to the Sanskrit च (a palatal sound, although IAST uses the letter c to denote it)

Software

Representation in software follows the same rules as the háček.

Unicode

Character information
Preview	Č		č
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CARON		LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CARON
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	268	U+010C	269	U+010D
UTF-8	196 140	C4 8C	196 141	C4 8D
Numeric character reference	Č	Č	č	č
Named character reference	&Ccaron;		&ccaron;

U+010C (uppercase Č—use Alt 268 for input) and U+010D (lowercase č—use Alt 269 for input) create this character. The combining character U+030C can be placed together with either c or C to generally achieve the same visual result.