Cyrillic Small Letter Ka

Switch to a Cyrillic layout and press R without Shift. On the standard Russian and Ukrainian layouts in Windows 11, к sits where Latin R is; other layouts, such as phonetic ones, may put it on K instead.

What sound does к make?

It writes the k sound, as in “kite”. Each language adds its own rules: in Russian, the following letter can make к “soft”, pronounced with the tongue raised toward the palate. Serbian and Macedonian give it the plain k sound. Read the whole word in its own language.

Where did к come from?

It was modeled on Greek kappa. Early Cyrillic took shape around Preslav, a Bulgarian royal centre, in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, for Christian books and schooling in Old Bulgarian, an early Slavic language. The alphabet also borrowed from Glagolitic, an older Slavic script, but ka itself followed the Greek letter. As Cyrillic spread, ka kept its k role while local pronunciation diverged.