Loading AI tools
11th letter of the Latin alphabet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
K, or k, is the eleventh letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is kay (pronounced /ˈkeɪ/), plural kays.[1]
K | |
---|---|
K k | |
![]() | |
Usage | |
Writing system | Latin script |
Type | Alphabetic and Logographic |
Language of origin | Latin language |
Sound values | |
In Unicode | U+004B, U+006B |
Alphabetical position | 11 |
History | |
Development | |
Time period | ~−700 to present |
Descendants | • K • Ʞ • ₭ |
Sisters | |
Other | |
Associated graphs | k(x) |
Writing direction | Left-to-right |
The letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive.
Egyptian hieroglyph D |
Proto-Sinaitic K |
Proto-Canaanite kap |
Phoenician kaph |
Western Greek Kappa |
Etruscan K |
Latin K | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
The letter K comes from the Greek letter Κ (kappa), which was taken from the Semitic kaph, the symbol for an open hand.[2] This, in turn, was likely adapted by Semitic tribes who had lived in Egypt from the hieroglyph for "hand" representing /ḏ/ in the Egyptian word for hand, ⟨ḏ-r-t⟩ (likely pronounced /ˈcʼaːɾat/ in Old Egyptian). The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value /k/ instead, because their word for hand started with that sound.[3]
K was brought into the Latin alphabet with the name ka /kaː/ to differentiate it from C, named ce (pronounced /keː/) and Q, named qu and pronounced /kuː/. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. ⟨EQO⟩ 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. ⟨KALENDIS⟩ 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C and its variant G replaced most usages of K and Q. K survived only in a few fossilized forms, such as Kalendae, "the calends".[4]
After Greek words were taken into Latin, the kappa was transliterated as a C. Loanwords from other alphabets with the sound /k/ were also transliterated with C. Hence, the Romance languages generally use C, in imitating Classical Latin's practice, and have K only in later loanwords from other language groups. The Celtic languages also tended to use C instead of K, and this influence carried over into Old English.
Orthography | Phonemes | Environment |
---|---|---|
Standard Chinese (Pinyin) | /kʰ/ | |
English | /k/, silent | |
Esperanto | /k/ | |
Faroese | /k/ | |
/tʃʰ/ | Before ⟨e⟩ (except ⟨ei⟩), ⟨i⟩, and ⟨j⟩ | |
German | /k/ | |
Ancient Greek romanization | /k/ | |
Modern Greek romanization | /k/ | Except before /e, i/ |
/c/ | Before /e, i/ | |
Icelandic | /kʰ/, /cʰ/, /k/, /c/, /ʰk/, /x/ | |
Norwegian | /k/ | Except before ⟨i⟩ or ⟨y⟩ |
/ç/ | Before ⟨i⟩ or ⟨y⟩ | |
Swedish | /k/ | |
/ɕ/ | Before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨y⟩, ⟨y⟩, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩ | |
Turkish | /k/ | Except before ⟨â⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨û⟩, ⟨ü⟩ |
/c/ | Before ⟨â⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨û⟩, ⟨ü⟩ |
The letter usually represents /k/ in English. It is silent when it comes before ⟨n⟩ at the start of a stem, e.g.:
English is now the only Germanic language to productively use "hard" ⟨c⟩ (outside the digraph ⟨ck⟩) rather than ⟨k⟩ (although Dutch uses it in loan words of Latin origin, and the pronunciation of these words follows the same hard/soft distinction as in English).[citation needed]
Like J, X, Q, and Z, the letter K is not used very frequently in English. It is the fifth least frequently used letter in the English language, with a frequency in words of about 0.8%.
In most languages where it is employed, this letter represents the sound /k/ (with or without aspiration) or some similar sound.
The Latinization of Modern Greek also uses this letter for /k/. However, before the front vowels (/e, i/), this is rendered as [c], which can be considered a separate phoneme.
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨k⟩ for the voiceless velar plosive.
Preview | K | k | K | K | k | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K | LATIN SMALL LETTER K | KELVIN SIGN | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER K | |||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 75 | U+004B | 107 | U+006B | 8490 | U+212A | 65323 | U+FF2B | 65355 | U+FF4B |
UTF-8 | 75 | 4B | 107 | 6B | 226 132 170 | E2 84 AA | 239 188 171 | EF BC AB | 239 189 139 | EF BD 8B |
Numeric character reference | K | K | k | k | K | K | K | K | k | k |
EBCDIC family | 210 | D2 | 146 | 92 | ||||||
ASCII[lower-alpha 1] | 75 | 4B | 107 | 6B |