[1] This alternation is caused by a historical palatalization of /k/ which took place in Late Latin, and led to a change in the pronunciation of the sound [k] before the front vowels [e] and [i].
[2][3] Later, other languages not directly descended from Latin, such as English, inherited this feature as an orthographic convention.
Yod-coalescence has altered instances of /sj/ ─ particularly in unstressed syllables ─ to /ʃ/ in most varieties of English, affecting words such as ocean, logician and magician.
The digraph ⟨ck⟩ may be used to retain the hard ⟨c⟩ pronunciation in inflections and derivatives of a word such as trafficking from the verb traffic.
Besides a few examples (recce, soccer, Speccy), ⟨cc⟩ fits neatly with the regular rules of ⟨c⟩: Before ⟨i e y⟩, the second ⟨c⟩ is soft while the first is hard.
Many placenames and other proper nouns with -cester (from Old English ceaster, meaning Roman station or walled town) are pronounced with /stər/ such as Worcester (/ˈwʊstər/), Gloucester (/ˈɡlɒstər/ or /ˈɡlɔːstər/), and Leicester (/ˈlɛstər/).
Italian orthography uses ⟨ch⟩ to indicate a hard pronunciation before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩, analogous to English using ⟨k⟩ (as in kill and keep) and ⟨qu⟩ (as in mosquito and queue).
In addition to hard and soft ⟨c⟩, the digraph ⟨sc⟩ represents /ʃ/ or, if between vowels, /ʃʃ/ when followed by ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ (as in scena or sciarpa with /ʃ/, crescendo and fascia with /ʃʃ/).
Potential remedies include altering the spelling to asate and rasage, though no standard conventions exist.
[citation needed] Examples include the Mortal Kombat franchise and product names such as Kool-Aid and Nesquik.
Examples include Amerika or Amerikkka (where the ⟨k⟩ is reminiscent of German and the totalitarian Nazi regime and the racist Ku Klux Klan, respectively).
[5][6] Most modern Romance languages make the hard/soft distinction with ⟨c⟩,[2] except a few that have undergone spelling reforms such as Ladino and archaic variants like Sardinian.
Potential remedies include altering the spelling to saques and taquez, though no standard conventions exist.
Hồ Chí Minh had proposed a simplified spelling, as shown in the title of one of his books, 'Đường kách mệnh'.