-tial or -cial ?

[hazelnut]

suffixes for adjectives: -tial & -cial

financial, commercial, beneficial

but: influential, essential, reverential

Why are some words spelt with 'c' and others with 't'? Is there a rule?

 

[BobK]

suffixes for adjectives: -tial & -cial

financial, commercial, beneficial

but: influential, essential, reverential

Why are some words spelt with 'c' and others with 't'? Is there a rule?

No. (Or, to put it another way, yes - if you know a vast amount about etymology ;-)). At a guess (the history of English isn't something I've studied much) the ones with a c were imported from words that had the Latin ending -cialis and the ones with t were imported as nouns from French, ending with -ce and had their adjectives constructed by someone who knew that the Latin noun (e.g. influentia -ae) had a t. Spellings tended to be imposed by scholars, and so have had a long time to acquire the appearance of total randomness!

But that's only a guess, and in any case it doesn't lead to a rule that's of any use to an ELT student. Sorry - good question (I hadn't noticed the inconsistency, so thanks :up.

b

 

[BobK]

Aha! Better idea (also to do with the history of lexicography, but as it concerns printers rather than scholars.) ;-) It was presumably easier for a caster of type to produce a ligature between n and t.

But students don't need to know this, if the rule is '-cial unless preceded by n, in which case it's -tial'. (I don't at the moment say that it is a rule, but I can't think of a counter-example - in a modern text. There used to be a lot of variation.)

b

 

[5jj]

Aha! Better idea (also to do with the history of lexicography, but as it concerns printers rather than scholars.) ;-) It was presumably easier for a caster of type to produce a ligature between n and t.

But students don't need to know this, if rule is '-cial unless preceded by n, in which case it's -tial'. (I don't at the moment say that it is a rule, but I can't think of a counter-example - in a modern text. There used to be a lot of variation.)

b

financial?

 

[birdeen's call]

financial?

"Financial" is certainly problematic if we want to make our rule Latin-dependent. It never existed in Latin.

 

[5jj]

"Financial" is certainly problematic if we want to make our rule Latin-dependent. It never existed in Latin.

I don't think BobK's rule was Latin-dependent.

BobK?

 

[bhaisahab]

I don't think BobK's rule was Latin-dependent.

BobK?

My OED says that "finance" is from Old French.

 

[BobK]

I don't think BobK's rule was Latin-dependent.

BobK?

Oh dear, I seem to have acquired an eponymous rule ;-) And to make it worse, I've found numerous counter-examples. Some of them are obscure enough for most people to ignore them - abbatial, equinoctial, inertial and interstitial. But others are not so easy to explain away: initial, nuptial, partial, spatial... there are probably more. Thanks to fivejedjon for the -nc- exception - all the ones I'd found were -[no N]t- .

To answer the 'Latin-dependent' question, my surmise was not exclusively Latin-dependent. I was saying that in order to predict the spelling it would be necessary to know a word's provenance. Latin comes into the story in many cases.

Back at 'the rule'. I think it works as a rule of thumb. So far we've only come up with a handful of exceptions, and there are very many more 'regular' examples (Latin regula [='a rule'];-) - all the words derived (either directly or indirectly) from a Latin present participle. for example: substantial, penitential, existential, influential ... etc etc.

b

 

[5jj]

Oh dear, I seem to have acquired an eponymous rule ;-)

I was eponymising (?) the rule only for -ncial/-ntial words. It seems to be sound for these - so far I have found the only exception. Now there's a challenge for somebody!

 

[BobK]

I was eponymising (?) the rule only for -ncial/-ntial words. It seems to be sound for these - so far I have found the only exception. Now there's a challenge for somebody!

One Look has the power: Words that match the pattern "*ncial" - OneLook Dictionary Search ;-) Most people could probably get along without internuncial or quincuncial, but some of the others (like provincial) are more indispensable; and why isn't that 'less dispensable'?

b

 

[5jj]

Which of or us is going to be the first to manage to slip internuncial or quincuncial into the answer to a question?

The answer to your question may be that despensable is far less commonly used than indispensable, perhaps because the latter has a usefully absolute feel that the former lacks. This may be why essential is far more commonly used than inessential. Indeed, inessential is so rarely encountered that (1) I had to check in the dictionary to makes sure it existed (and that it wasn't *unessential and (2) some people have started using non-essential.

 

[BobK]

The thing about dispense is that it takes with. So it would be sensible (and even understandable) to gloss 'more indispensable' as 'less dispensable with'. Anyway...

Some more numbers from OneLook, searching for what it calls 'common words' (though their use of 'common' extends to words like 'internuncial'):

Words ending -tial-------110
(inc. ending -ntial--------66)
Words ending -cial--------79
(inc. ending -ncial---------9)

So, of a total of 189 words ending -[c/t]ial, 72% conform to the rule of thumb I suggested in my second reply (https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ask-teacher/135339-tial-cial.html#post682456 ); and an even stronger degree of accuracy (79/88: 80%) can be achieved by considering only -cial words; 'more accurate => less useful' - ain't that always the way :-(;-)

b