Communicator
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k

voiceless velar plosive — k in skin, c in cat.

plosivevelarvoiceless

Hear it

Synthesised in your browser from this sound's own recipe — formants for vowels, filtered noise for fricatives, a burst for plosives. A robot mouth, not a recording: what you hear is the physics the symbol describes.

In combination

Sounds change colour depending on their neighbours — coarticulation is why isolated drilling only gets you so far.

ka
ki
ku
ak
aka
iki

Build longer chains in the combination lab.

How each language writes it

LanguageSpellingsExampleNote
Englishckckch (Greek)qu cat kæt
cat
Frenchc (a,o,u)qukch (Greek words) quand kɑ̃
when
Spanishcquk queso ˈkeso
cheese

Rows follow the languages you have switched on at the top.