This post came about organically. I realised that a lot of words that jumped at me and captured my attention start with the letter ‘c’, so I decided to focus on words that begin with ‘c’ to churn out this list. It seems that a lot of words begin with ‘c’. We all know that ‘e’ is the most common letter in the English language, so how does ‘c’ compare to ‘e’?
I did some Googling and according to the lexicon in the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘c’ is the tenth most letter in the English language (or at least, the words that this dictionary contains). I love picking up trivia like this, you know.
I think another reason why ‘c’ interests me is that it can make two sounds: /k/ or /s/. Since I’m a literacy coach, I find myself having to remind my students about which words begin with the hard ‘c’ or soft ‘c’ sound. In fact, I will need to impart them the Rule of ‘C’ when school reopens next week. Here it is: The letter c represents /s/ before the letters e, i or y; otherwise it represents /k/.
Thank you for reading my Crypto Questions Letter Series.
