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K
K (named ''kay'' )〔"K" ''Oxford English Dictionary,'' 2nd edition (1989); ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1993); "kay," op. cit.〕 is the eleventh letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. In English, 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 kap, the symbol for an open hand.〔("K". ''The Oxford English Dictionary'', 2nd ed., 1977, online ) 〕 This, in turn, was likely adapted by Semites who had lived in Egypt from the hieroglyph for "hand" representing D in the Egyptian word for hand, ''d-r-t''. The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value instead, because their word for hand started with that sound.〔Cyrus H. Gordon: ''The Accidental Invention of the Phonemic Alphabet'' 〕
In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the sounds /k/ and /g/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, Q was used to represent /k/ or /g/ before a rounded vowel, K before /a/, 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".
When Greek words were taken into Latin, the Kappa was transliterated as a C. Loanwords from other alphabets with the sound /k/ were also transliterated with C. Hence, the Romance languages generally use C 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.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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