No. 526 in Russian
ко
"Ко" is a preposition in Russian, meaning "to" or "toward," used before certain words for euphonic reasons.
In a sentence
Я подошёл ко двери.
I approached the door.
The word 'ко' is used here as a preposition. It means 'to' and is used before the noun 'двери' because the next word starts with the consonant cluster 'дв', which makes 'к двери' harder to pronounce. This is a phonetic adaptation.
Он прислушивался ко мне.
He was listening closely to me.
Here, 'ко' is again a preposition, meaning 'to,' and is used instead of 'к' because 'мне' starts with the consonant 'м'.
Мы отправились ко входу в парк.
We headed to the entrance to the park.
In this sentence, 'ко' is used for euphonic reasons before the noun 'входу' to facilitate smoother pronunciation and is interchangeable with 'к' in more formal texts.
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “ко” in actual Russian podcasts.
Find “ко” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Russian podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Learning English?
LangTurbo plays real English podcasts with every line translated into русский, and tells you what any word means in that sentence. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Russian books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).