K

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Image:Latin alphabet Kk.svg
Basic Latin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd   Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv   Ww Xx Yy Zz

K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (pronounced /keɪ/).^[1]

Contents 1 History and usage 2 Codes for computing 3 Meanings of K 4 Notes 5 See also

[edit] History and usage

Egyptian hieroglyph D	Proto-Semitic K	Phoenician K	Etruscan K	Greek Kappa
<hiero>d</hiero>	Image:Proto-semiticK-01.png	Image:PhoenicianK-01.png	Image:EtruscanK-01.png	Image:Kappa uc lc.svg

It comes from the Greek Κ or κ (Kappa) developed from the Semitic Kap, symbol for an open hand. This in turn was likely adapted by Semites who had lived in Egypt, from the hieroglyph for "hand" representing D for the Egyptian word for hand, d-r-t. The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value /k/ instead, because their word for hand started with that sound.

The Semitic value of /k/ was maintained in most classical as well as modern languages, although Latin abandoned the use of K almost completely, preferring C. When Greek words were taken into Latin, the Kappa was converted to C; Latin used K for other languages such as Etruscan, as seen in words such as kalendae, "first day of the month", whence English calendar. Some words from other alphabets were also transliterated into C. Therefore, the Romance languages have K only in words from still other language groups. The Celtic languages also chose C over K, and this influence carried over into Old English. Today, English is the only Germanic language to productively use hard C in addition to K (although Dutch uses it in learned words of Latin origin and follows the same "hard/soft" distinction in such words as does French and English -- but not in native words).

Some English linguists prefer to reverse the Latin transliteration process for proper names in Greek, spelling Hecate as "Hekate", for example. And the writing down of languages that don't have their own alphabet with the Latin one has resulted in a standardization of the letter for this sound, as in Kwakiutl.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, [k] is the symbol for the voiceless velar plosive.

Several other alphabets also use characters with sharp angles to indicate the sound /k/ or syllables that start with a /k/, for example: Arabic ك, Hebrew כ (in some fonts), Korean ㄱ. This kind of phonetic-visual association was studied by Wolfgang Köhler. However, there are also many examples of rounded letters for /k/, like ค in Thai and Ք in Armenian.

[edit] Codes for computing

In Unicode the capital K is codepoint U+004B and the lowercase k is U+006B.

The ASCII code for capital K is 75 and for lowercase k is 107; or in binary 01001011 and 01101011, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital K is 210, and for lowercase k, 146.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "K" and "k" for upper and lower case respectively.

[edit] Meanings of K

See K (disambiguation).

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Ƙ (hooked K)
• К, the Cyrillic letter ka

The ISO basic Latin alphabet
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letter K with diacritics ḰḱǨǩĶķḲḳḴḵᶄƘƙⱩⱪ Two-letter combinations Ka Kb Kc Kd Ke Kf Kg Kh Ki Kj Kk Kl Km Kn Ko Kp Kq Kr Ks Kt Ku Kv Kw Kx Ky Kz KA KB KC KD KE KF KG KH KI KJ KK KL KM KN KO KP KQ KR KS KT KU KV KW KX KY KZ Letter-digit & Digit-letter combinations                 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 K5 K6 K7 K8 K9                 0K 1K 2K 3K 4K 5K 6K 7K 8K 9K history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters

als:K

ar:K arc:K ast:K az:K bs:K br:K (lizherenn) ca:K cs:K co:K da:K de:K el:K es:K eo:K eu:K fa:K fr:K (lettre) gd:K gl:K ko:K hr:K ilo:K id:K is:K it:K he:K ka:K kw:K sw:K ht:K ku:K (herf) la:K lv:K lt:K hu:K nl:K (letter) ja:K no:K nn:K pl:K pt:K ksh:K (Watt ėßß datt?) ro:K qu:K ru:K (латиница) simple:K sk:K sl:K sr:K (слово латинице) fi:K sv:K tl:K th:K vi:K tr:K uk:K (латиниця) yo:K zh-yue:K zh:K