姉は知らないことも、さも知っているかのように話す
I came across さも for the first time recently: it is supposedly an adverbial usage, meaning 'as if' or 'in that way'. However, in the sentence above I'm not sure what the か is doing.
I had a similar confusion lately about いかに where it encloses a phrase with か, which I took to mean that it was asking a rhetorical question within a sentence and then answering it. I'm not sure if it is related to above question though...
日本の技術がいかに進んでいるか、よくわかった。
さも is one of the optional "guiding" adverbs. It is almost always used with ように or みたいに, but さも by itself adds little to the overall meaning of the sentence. It works like まるで, which is another guiding adverb, but さも is more literary and often accusatory. (Another representative guiding adverb is もし; you probably know this is optional.) You have to master the grammar of かのように first, and then remember まるで and さも can be used along with this pattern.
いかに is "how", and it can form an embedded question (いかに進んでいるか = how advanced it is). However, I think this has little to do with the かのように construction.
