It is the letter C with a tail at the bottom.  I know it has an S sound, but I cannot remember its name.  Help.

This one: ç?  A cedilla it is.

Brazilian dude

You are describing the c-cedilla (Ç).

[url=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/C+cedilla]ce·dil·la n.
A mark ( , ) placed beneath the letter c, as in the spelling of the French word garçon, to indicate that the letter is to be pronounced (s).

[Obsolete Spanish, diminutive of ceda, the letter z (so called because a small z was formerly written after a c, and later below it, to indicate that the normal hard c was to be pronounced as a sibilant, like s or z), from Late Latin zeta][/url]

Funny that I’ve never seen it in a Spanish word, though… only in French.

-Tim

Tim, que passa nessa sua cabeça?

Brazilian dude

P.S. Catalan and Turkish also use it.

My grandma used to taunt my brother all the time.  One day when he was 6 or so, he stormed in as if he were in possession of a secret weapon and announced: Grandma, I know something that you don’t know.  What is that? - she asked.  It’s a missia, he replied.  A missia?  I really don’t know that - said my grandma.  I knew you wouldn’t know, announced my brother exultantly.  I’ll show you.  He got a piece of paper and wrote a ç and said Look, grandma, this is a missia.  She said, "That’s a cedilla (cedilha for us) not a missia, you fool".  It wasn’t that time that he beat her.

Brazilian dude

For a while she thought he was talking about a missiva (a missive, a letter).

Brazilian dude

Thanks for the responses.  I’m new to the game.  Is my question so simple that I’m given a one star Neophyte rating?

Kathy, thank you for the clarification.  

I’ve been reading the banter in the Grammar section lately and was too bashful to reply.    

Especially the main Swedish newspapers try to spell foreign names correctly. That means for example using cedillas, eñes, correct accents even for French, Icelandic thorn Þ, þ and eth Ð, ð, and German ü as required. Fortunately for most people, they don’t insist on printing Arabic, Chinese, Indian etc. names "correctly".

Swedish Wikipedia mentions as main users of the cedilla + c French, Portuguese, Catalan and Turkish.

Example words from S-Wiki: Moçambique, français (the French language), Curaçao, "Barça" (pet name for "Barcelona", which is written with a "normal" c).

A cedilla on s is used in northern Kurdish, Turkish and Romanian, a cedilla on t i Romanian, and a cedilla on n in Latvian.

The name of the letter, not the diacritic, is « c cédille » in French.  Don’t know what English speakers call it…

Don’t know what English speakers call it…

I think in American English it is usually called ‘cedilla’, with roughly a Spanish pronunciation. But in Britain it’s probably closer to cedille. It was replaced by ‘z’ in Spanish in the 18th century I think, so the Americans might have been familiar with the Spanish version.

[quote author=melissa link=board=spell;num=1123086785;start=0#12 date=08/04/05 at 01:58:37]called ‘cedilla’, with roughly a Spanish pronunciation

Which part of [se’dil@] is Spanish?

As I already posted, and to address Flam’s question:

Strictly speaking, the letter is called c-cedilla (don’t know if it is typically hyphenated or not), whereas the mark itself is called cedilla.

-Tim

Tim is absolutely right, since the cedilla can be an appendage of other letters, such as the s and the t, and God knows what else.

Brazilian dude

[quote author=Brazilian_dude link=board=spell;num=1123086785;start=15#15 date=08/04/05 at 08:15:43]Tim is absolutely right, since the cedilla can be an appendage of other letters, such as the s and the t, and God knows what else.

I mentioned the Latvian n + cedilla.

Anders, the language God (in whom I don’t believe)

Would that be the same appendange as on the bottom of the a in my signature…but i believe it is facing the opposite way…

J