On the continent, meanwhile, a similar phonetic change had also been going on (for example, in Italian). However, during the course of the Old English period, /k/ before front vowels ( /e/ and /i/) were palatalized, having changed by the tenth century to, though ⟨c⟩ was still used, as in cir(i)ce, wrecc(e)a. The Old English Latin-based writing system was learned from the Celts, apparently of Ireland hence ⟨c⟩ in Old English also originally represented /k/ the Modern English words kin, break, broken, thick, and seek all come from Old English words written with ⟨c⟩: cyn, brecan, brocen, þicc, and séoc. When the Roman alphabet was introduced into Britain, ⟨c⟩ represented only /k/, and this value of the letter has been retained in loanwords to all the insular Celtic languages: in Welsh, Irish, Gaelic, ⟨c⟩ represents only /k/. Other alphabets have letters homoglyphic to 'c' but not analogous in use and derivation, like the Cyrillic letter Es (С, с) which derives from the lunate sigma, named due to its resemblance to the crescent moon. Hence, in the classical period and after, ' g' was treated as the equivalent of Greek gamma, and ' c' as the equivalent of kappa this shows in the romanization of Greek words, as in 'ΚΑΔΜΟΣ', 'ΚΥΡΟΣ', and 'ΦΩΚΙΣ' came into Latin as ' cadmvs', ' cyrvs' and ' phocis', respectively. The use of ' c' (and its variant ' g') replaced most usages of ' k' and ' q'. During the 3rd century BC, a modified character was introduced for /ɡ/, and ' c' itself was retained for /k/. Of these, ' q' was used to represent /k/ or /ɡ/ before a rounded vowel, ' k' before ' a', and ' c' elsewhere. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters ' c k q' were used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). In Latin it eventually took the ' c' form in Classical Latin. Already in the Western Greek alphabet, Gamma first took a ' ' form in Early Etruscan, then ' ' in Classical Etruscan. In the Etruscan language, plosive consonants had no contrastive voicing, so the Greek ' Γ' (Gamma) was adopted into the Etruscan alphabet to represent /k/.

Powell, a specialist in the history of writing, states 'It is hard to imagine how gimel = 'camel' can be derived from the picture of a camel (it may show his hump, or his head and neck!)'. Another possibility is that it depicted a camel, the Semitic name for which was gamal. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph for a staff sling, which may have been the meaning of the name gimel.

Letter m png