BZOVIUS, or BZoWsxr, ABRAHAM, 1567-1637; a Polish Dominican, one of the most voluminous writers of his time. He was professor of philosophy and theology at Milan and Bologna. lie continued the ecclesiastical annals of Baronies from 1198 to 1532.
third letter in all the alphabets derived from the Roman. It corresponds in place to the Greek gamma (f), and had originally the same sound—viz., that of g in gun; as is expressly recorded, and as is proved by very old inscriptions, on which we read leciones, lece, for what were afterwards written legions, lege. This medial or flat guttural sound of c was at an early period of Roman history lost in the sharp guttural or k-sound (see ALPHABET), and this continued to be the pronunciation of the letter c in Latin down at least to the 8th c. of the Christian era, not only in such words as comes, clam°, but also before the vowels e and i. Such Latin words as Cicero, fecit, are uniformly represented in Greek by Kikero, phekit; and in the times of the empire, the Germans borrowed Kaiser, keller, from Caesar, cellarium.
It seems difficult, at first sight, to account for the same letter having sounds so dif ferent as those heard in call and in civil. The beginning of the transition is to be found iu the effect produced upon certain consonants by their standing before i followed by a vowel. Thus, in nation, ti has the effect of sh; and out of diurnal has sprung journal. In such combinations, i is originally a semi-vowel having the force of y, and it is easy to see that tyon, dyer, pronounced in one syllable, cannot but slide into the sibilant or hissing sounds of shoa,jur. A precisely similar effect is produced on the k-sound before la, iv, i,o; in Lucius, Porcia, or rather Lukyus, Porkya, ky tends to slide into a hissing sound similar to that of ty and dy. This tendency showed itself early in the Latin tongue; and in the vulgar Latin of later ages, and in the Romanic tongues that sprang out of it, it fully developed itself, so that the Italian came to pronounce Lucia as if written Lutshia. Combinations like ceo, tea, are little different from cia and cia, and would naturally follow the same course; and the 8-sound being once associated with the letter c in these positions was gradually extended to it in cases where the e or i was not followed by a vowel.
The Anglo-Saxon alphabet resembled the Roman, from which it sprang, in having no k, and in always using c with the sound of k; king and keen were spelled cyning and cene. It was also without q, for which C20 was used—quick being spelled czoic. By a process analogous to that described above, such Anglo-Saxon words as ceorl, ceosan (pro. kyorl. kyosan), became transformed into the English churl, choose. And this suggests a
natural explanation of the multitude of cases where the c of the Latin has been trans formed into ch in French, and has passed in this form into English—e.g., Lat. caput, Fr. chef, Eng. chief; Let. caminus, Eng. chimney; Lat. carmen, Eng. charm. For as the Anglo-Saxons turned the kart or kor/ of the other Gothic nations into kyorl, so doubt less the Roinanized Gauls corrupted the pronunciation of the Latin camera, for exam ple, into kqamera (compare Eng. cart, pro. by some kyart), which would then readily slide into chambre.
In the other Germanic alphabets, which were derived partly from the Roman and partly from the Greek, the Greek kappa or k is used almost to the exclusion of c, which, in German, Swedish, etc., appears only in words borrowed from the Romanic languages. See letter K.
In modern English, c is pronounced like k before the vowels a, o, u, and like s before e, i, and y; and where the sharp guttural sound has to be represented before e, i, and y, the GAmartic k has superseded the Anglo-Saxon c, as in king, keen. In so far as mere sound is concerned, cis a superfluous letter in English; in every case its power could be represented either by k or by s. In the corresponding words of the several Aryan languages, we tied various substitutions for c, thus: Let. calamus, Eng. halm (stalk), Rus. soloma; Lat. cord-, Eng. heart, Rus. serdtse; Lat. collum, Ger. pals (neck); Lat. aver (sharp); Fr. aigre, Eng. eager; Lat. due- (lead or draw). Ger. rog, Eng. tug; Gr. pepo, Lat. coquo, Eng. cook; Lat. dictus, Ital. ditto. C sometimes disappears before 1 and r; thus: Gr. Idea (to sound one's fame, allied to kfrien, to call or shout), Lat. laudo, to praise, Ger. Taut, voice, Eng. load, old Ger. hlud, fame (hence Hludwig or Clodowig, Clovis, Louis).
C, in music, is the name of one of the notes of the gamut. The scale of C major has neither flats nor sharps, and therefore is called the natural scale. The different octaves of the gamut, beginning with 0, are called by the Germans the great, small, one-stroked, two-stroked, etc., beginning with thus, c C, C,C is also the sound on which the system of music is founded, and from which the mathe matical proportions of intervals are taken; that is, a string of a given length sounding C, when divided into certain proportions, is made to produce harmonically the intervals of the different fundamental $ 431 C MAJon, the first of the twelve major keys in modern music; being the natural scale, it has no signature.
C Mixon, the tonic minor of C major, has three flats for its signature—viz., B flat, E flat, and A flat.