K
11th letter of the basic Latin alphabet
K (minuscule: 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 west 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 /ˈcʼaːɾat/ in Old Egyptian). The Levantine Semites evidently assigned it the sound value /k/ instead, because their word for hand started with that sound, similar to the Hebrew word for the palm of the hand "caph".
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.
The public source identifies “K” as 11th letter of the basic Latin alphabet. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around 11th, letter and basic.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q9922. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “K” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.