Kra (letter)

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Kra (letter)
Kʼ ĸ
Usage
Typealphabetic
Language of origin Inuttitut
Sound values[q]
In  Unicode U+0138
History
TransliterationsQ q
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
k in a Greenlandic-Danish dictionary from 1926 kra in a dictionary (ubt).JPG
ĸ in a Greenlandic–Danish dictionary from 1926
"Avangnamiok" in all-caps, title of Greenlandic periodical from 1957, with the uppercase of k as K'. Avangnamiok title.jpg
"Avangnâmioĸ" in all-caps, title of Greenlandic periodical from 1957, with the uppercase of ĸ as Kʼ.
Kra, small caps K (if present), and Cyrillic small k, using the fonts: Arial, Times New Roman, Doulos SIL, Cambria, Linux Libertine, Andron Mega Corpus, Adobe Minion Pro, Courier New, and Consolas. Second row: italics, using the same fonts. Kra-and-smallcap-k-and-Cyrillic-k-in-different-fonts.svg
Kra, small caps K (if present), and Cyrillic small к, using the fonts: Arial, Times New Roman, Doulos SIL, Cambria, Linux Libertine, Andron Mega Corpus, Adobe Minion Pro, Courier New, and Consolas. Second row: italics, using the same fonts.

Kra (uppercase: Kʼ, lowercase: ĸ) is a glyph formerly used to write the Kalaallisut language (also known as Greenlandic) of Greenland and is now only found in Inuttitut, a distinct Inuktitut dialect. It is visually similar to a Latin small capital letter K , a Greek letter Kappa: κ, or a Cyrillic small letter Ka: к.

It is used to denote the sound written as [q] in the International Phonetic Alphabet (the voiceless uvular plosive). For collation purposes, it is therefore considered to be a type of q , rather than a type of k , and should sort near q.

Its Unicode code point for the lowercase form is U+0138ĸLATIN SMALL LETTER KRA (ĸ). If this is unavailable, q is substituted. The letter can be capitalized as Kʼ, but it is not encoded separately as a single letter because it is very similar to the Latin capital letter K followed by an apostrophe, [1] [2] preferably the modifier letter apostrophe, U+02BCʼMODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE. [3] However, this case mapping is not implemented in Unicode.

In 1973, a spelling reform replaced kra in Greenlandic with the Latin small letter q (and its capital form, with the Latin capital letter Q). [4]

Notes

  1. ↑ Everson, Michael (1998-09-12). "Responses to NCITS/L2 and Unicode Consortium comments on numerous proposals" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-06-12. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  2. ↑ Everson, Michael (1998-05-25). "Additional Latin characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-06-12. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  3. ↑ Aliprand, Joan M. (2002-04-21). "Status of Mapping between Characters of ISO 5426-2 and ISO/IEC 10646-1 (UCS)" (PDF). The capital form of the letter kra can be encoded as the sequence U+004B LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K followed by U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE.
  4. ↑ Everson, Michael. "Greenlandic alphabet" (PDF). Evertype. Retrieved 2009-06-23. Note that in the Greenlandic alphabet PDF from Evertype, the apostrophe-like symbol is represented by the symbol of U+2018, LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK. However Michael Everson uses the shape of the right single quotation mark or modifier letter apostrophe in other documents (e.g. Everson 1998).
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