Ka (Cyrillic)

Not to be confused with the Latin letter K, the Greek letter Κ, or the Greenlandic letter ĸ.

Ka (К к; italics: К к) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.

Ka, како (Early Cyrillic alphabet)
К к
Usage
Writing system	Cyrillic
Type	Alphabetic
Sound values	[k]
History
Development	Κ κ К к
Other
Associated numbers	20 (Cyrillic numerals)
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Ka in Heorhiy Narbut's Azbuka (1917).

It commonly represents the voiceless velar plosive /k/, like the pronunciation of ⟨k⟩ in "king" or "kick".

History

The Cyrillic letter Ka was derived from the Greek letter Kappa (Κ κ).

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was како (kako), meaning "as".^[1]

In the Cyrillic numeral system, Ka had a value of 20.

Form

The Cyrillic letter Ka looks very similar, and corresponds to the Latin letter K. In many fonts, Cyrillic Ka is differentiated from its Latin and Greek counterparts by drawing one or both of its diagonal spurs with curved instead of straight. Also in some fonts the lowercase form of Ka has the vertical bar elongated above x-height, resembling the Latin lowercase k.

Usage

In Russian, the letter Ka represents the plain voiceless velar plosive /k/ or the palatalized one /kʲ/; for example, the word "короткий" ("short") contains both the kinds: [kɐˈrotkʲɪj]. The palatalized variant is pronounced when the following letter in the word is ь, е, ё, и, ю, or я.

In Macedonian and Serbian, it always represents the sound /k/.

Related letters and other similar characters

• Κ κ/ϰ : Greek letter Kappa
• K k : Latin letter K
• Q q : Latin letter Q
• C c : Latin letter C
• X x : Latin letter X

Computing codes

Character information

Preview	К		к
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER KA		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER KA
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1050	U+041A	1082	U+043A
UTF-8	208 154	D0 9A	208 186	D0 BA
Numeric character reference	К	К	к	к
Named character reference	К		к
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	235	EB	203	CB
Code page 855	199	C7	198	C6
Code page 866	138	8A	170	AA
Windows-1251	202	CA	234	EA
ISO-8859-5	186	BA	218	DA
Macintosh Cyrillic	138	8A	234	EA

See also

• Ka with descender
• Ka with hook
• Ka with stroke
• Ka with vertical stroke
• Aleut Ka
• Bashkir Ka
• Kje

External links

• The dictionary definition of К at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of к at Wiktionary
• On the Aorists in -κα. By R. G. Latham, Esq., M.D.

References

1. Corbett, Professor Greville; Comrie, Professor Bernard (September 2003). The Slavonic Languages. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-86137-6.