As a general rule Romance (I.e. those derived from Latin) languages don’t use the letters K, Y and W, so a common word such as the 2nd singular person of the present tense of the Italian verb for “understanding” is not going to start with a “k”.
I’m not Italian and I definitely misspell Italian words when writing them, but that " k" in your attempt was the bit that felt really, painfully wrong to me.
Ah, I think you’re right. I actually learned the word first from a Cory Doctorow novella I, Robot (no, not Asimov), and there I can see it’s definitely spelled with a “C”.
My ex was Italian-German, so linguistically “C” felt right for her when writing, but to spell it out she would use a “K” since the letter C in german doesn’t exist (yeah okay it does but not by itself, and if it does then it’s mostly from imported words… like capeesh…), and I’ve probably overwritten the spelling of “capeesh” in my head from that.
