While discussing the "Kalends" in chapter 36 in class, we wondered why the word began with "K," since we thought that the Roman alphabet did not include a "K."
Follow this link to learn more about the letter "K."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K
The two paragraphs below are most relevant:
"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".[5]
When Greek words were taken into Latin, the Kappa was changed to C, with a few exceptions such as the praenomen 'Kaeso'.[2] Some words from other alphabets were also transliterated with C. Hence, the Romance languages have 'K' only in words from other language groups. The Celtic languages also chose 'C' over 'K', and this influence carried over into Old English. Today, English is the only Germanic language to productively use hard C in addition to K (although Dutch uses it in learned words of Latin origin and follows the same hard/soft distinction in such words)."
You may also wish to follow this link to learn more about the "Kalends."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calends
