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K (Letter)

From Halbeeg, the open encyclopedia · Af-Soomaali

153 languages
K ace
K af
K als
K am
K an
K ang
K ar
K arc
K arz
K ast
K az
K azb
K ban
K bat-smg
K bcl
K bew
K bg
K bn
K bs
K ca
K cdo
K ckb
K co
K crh
K cs
K csb
K cv
K cy
K da
K de
K diq
K el
K eml
K en
K eo
K es
K et
K eu
K fa
K ff
K fi
K fj
K fo
K fur
K fy
K ga
K gan
K gd
K gl
K gn
K gor
K gv
K ha
K hak
K he
K hi
K hr
K hsb
K ht
K hu
K id
K ig
K ilo
K io
K is
K it
K ja
K ka
K kge
K ko
K ks
K kv
K kw
K la
K lb
K lg
K lmo
K lt
K lv
K mg
K mr
K ms
K mzn
K nah
K nn
K no
K nrm
K nup
K oc
K pl
K pt
K qu
K ro
K scn
K sco
K se
K sh
K simple
K sk
K sl
K smn
K sn
K srn
K stq
K su
K sv
K sw
K tdd
K th
K tk
K tl
K tn
K tr
K tt
K tyv
K ur
K vec
K vep
K vi
K vo
K war
K wuu
K xmf
K yi
K yo
K zh
K zh-classical
K zh-min-nan
K zh-yue
K (alifbeet)
San-serif shown in Neue Helvetica 48 pt.. Serifs shown in Bodoni 48 pt..Eirik1231 · Public domain · Commons

K is a letter of the Latin alphabet. In the English alphabet and in most European languages, it occupies the twenty-first position. Its lowercase form is "k".

In most languages that use it, K represents the voiceless velar plosive, a sound produced at the back of the mouth without vibration of the vocal cords—the sound at the beginning of the Somali word "kabo". This letter became part of the Latin-script Somali alphabet in 1972.

History

The letter's origin traces back to the Phoenician letter kaph, thought to have represented a hand. The Greeks adapted this to create kappa (Κ, κ), and the Romans took the letter from Greek, sometimes influenced by Etruscan and early Latin forms.

In early Latin, K was used sparingly because the letter C typically represented the /k/ sound. K was retained in only a few common words, such as "Kalendae". Use of K became more widespread when Germanic and northern European languages adopted the Latin alphabet, since C does not have a consistent sound value in those languages.

Language use

In German, Swedish, Polish, and Turkish, K is a regular and consistent letter. French and Italian use it selectively, mostly in borrowed words. Many African languages, including Somali and Swahili, use K as a basic letter with relatively little variation in its sound value.

Symbolic uses

K is used as a symbol in scientific fields: the unit Kelvin for temperature (K), the chemical symbol for potassium (K, from Latin kalium), and in mathematics and computing, where K often denotes one thousand or 1024. In Unicode, uppercase K is U+004B and lowercase k is U+006B.

NoteA velar plosive is a sound produced when the back of the tongue touches the soft palate (back of the roof of the mouth), with air released suddenly.
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