ĉu

/\t͡ʃu\/ particle

Letters

2 characters

Language

French

word origin

Misspellings

0

tracked variants

Confusables

0

similar word pairs

ĉu is aFrenchparticle. It means: Particule interrogative (portant sur l'ensemble de la proposition qui suit, par opposition à la série ki- de tabelvorto) souvent traduisible par est-ce que. Pronounced \t͡ʃu\.

Key facts for ĉu
PropertyValue
Headwordĉu
LanguageFrench
Part of speechParticle
IPA\t͡ʃu\
Letters2
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

ĉu is not present in the top-100,000 ranked French corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: Wordfreq corpus

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The French entry for ĉu is 2 letters long, classified as aparticle, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \t͡ʃu\. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for ĉu in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable French patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct French form is ĉu, spelled Ĉ-U, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Particule interrogative (portant sur l'ensemble de la proposition qui suit, par opposition à la série ki- de tabelvorto) souvent traduisible par est-ce que.
  2. 2
    Si (question indirecte).
  3. 3
    Hein (interjection).

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "ĉu"?
"ĉu" is spelled Ĉ-U. The IPA pronunciation is \t͡ʃu\.
What does "ĉu" mean?
As a particle, "ĉu" means: Particule interrogative (portant sur l'ensemble de la proposition qui suit, par opposition à la série ki- de tabelvorto) souvent traduisible par est-ce que.
How do you pronounce "ĉu"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "ĉu" is \t͡ʃu\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "ĉu" come from?
"ĉu" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Nearby French words

Other entries that begin with the letter Ĉ in our French index:

Explore PlainSpell

Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Frequency data from Wordfreq. Misspellings derived from Hunspell dictionaries.