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 ), plural kays. The letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive.

History

The letter K comes from the Greek letter Κ (kappa), which was taken from the Semitic kaph, the symbol for an open hand. 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 in Old Egyptian). The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value instead, because their word for hand started with that sound. 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 and (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". After Greek words were taken into Latin, the kappa was transliterated as a C. Loanwords from other alphabets with the sound 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.

Use in writing systems

English

The letter usually represents 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). 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%.

Other languages

In most languages where it is employed, this letter represents the sound (with or without aspiration) or some similar sound. The Latinization of Modern Greek also uses this letter for. However, before the front vowels, this is rendered as , which can be considered a separate phoneme.

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨k⟩ for the voiceless velar plosive.

Other uses

Related characters

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

Ligatures and abbreviations

Other representations

Computing

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