1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/K
K The eleventh letter in the Phoenician alphabet and in its
descendant Greek, the tenth in Latin owing to the omission
of Teth (see I), and once more the eleventh in the
alphabets of Western Europe owing to the insertion of J.
In its long history the shape of K has changed very little. It
is on the inscription of the Moabite Stone (early 9th cent. B.C.)
in the form (written from right to left) of 
and 
. Similar forms
are also found in early Aramaic, but another form 
or 
, which
is found in the Phoenician of Cyprus in the 9th or 10th century
B.C. has had more effect upon the later development of the
Semitic forms. The length of the two back strokes and the
manner in which they join the upright are the only variations
in Greek. In various places the back strokes, treated as an
angle <, become more rounded (, so that the letter appears as
, a form which in Latin probably affected the development of
C (q.v.). In Crete it is elaborated into 
and 
. In Latin K,
which is found in the earliest inscriptions, was soon replaced by
C, and survived only in the abbreviations for Kalendae and the
proper name Kaeso. The original name Kaph became in Greek
Kappa. The sound of K throughout has been that of the unvoiced
guttural, varying to some extent in its pronunciation
according to the nature of the vowel sound which followed it.
In Anglo-Saxon C replaced K through Latin influence, writing
being almost entirely in the hands of ecclesiastics. As the sound changes
have been discussed under C it is necessary here only to
refer to the palatalization of K followed earlier by a final e as in
watch (Middle English wacche, Anglo-Saxon wæcce) by the side
of wake (M.E. waken, A.-S. wacan); batch, bake, &c. Sometimes
an older form of the substantive survives, as in the Elizabethan
and Northern make = mate alongside match. (P. Gi.)