When translitarating katakana writing into latin alphabet, ku can be written with = or -. Those signs are used to show the distinction between the person marker and the noun it is attached to. They don't impact the pronunciation of a sentence as they don't have a phonetical value.
In some Ainu dialects ク can be shortened to ㇰ (k) when the verb coming before starts with the vowels /a/, /e/, /o/ and /u/ as stated in the second example. This phenomenon doesn't occur before the vowel /i/.
^服部四郎・知里真志保(Shirō Hattori & Mashiho Chiri) (1960),『アイヌ語諸方言の基礎語彙統計学的研究』「民族學研究」(Ainu Go Shohōgen No Kiso Goi Tōkeigaku Teki Kenkyū,“A Lexicostatistic Study on the Ainu Dialects”)[1] (in Japanese),Japan:日本文化人類学会(“Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology”)
^服部四郎(Shirō Hattori) (1964),アイヌ語方言辞典(Ainu Go Hōgen Jiten,“An Ainu Dialect Dictionary”)[2] (in Japanese),Japan:岩波書店(“Iwanami Shoten”)
^服部四郎(Shirō Hattori) (1964),アイヌ語方言辞典(Ainu Go Hōgen Jiten,“An Ainu Dialect Dictionary”)[3] (in Japanese),Japan:岩波書店(“Iwanami Shoten”)
Thekatakana syllableク(ku). Its equivalent inhiragana isく(ku). It is the eighth syllable in thegojūon order; its position isカ行ウ段(ka-gyō u-dan,“rowka, sectionu”).
Thekatakana syllabary is used primarily fortranscription of foreign language words into Japanese and the writing ofgairaigo (loan words), as well as to representonomatopoeias, technical and scientific terms, and the names of plants, animals, and minerals. It is also occasionally used in some words for emphasis, or to ease reading; katakana may be preferred for words becoming buried in the text if they are written under their canonical form inhiragana. Names of Japanese companies, as well as certain Japanese language words such as colloquial terms, are also sometimes written in katakana rather than the other systems. Formerly, female first names would often be written in katakana.
