Esperanto orthography

Esperantois written in aLatin-script alphabetof twenty-eight letters, with upper and lower case. This is supplemented bypunctuationmarks and by variouslogograms,such as thedigits0–9, currency signs such as $ € ¥ £ ₷, andmathematical symbols.The creator of Esperanto,L. L. Zamenhof,declared a principle of "one letter, one sound", though this is a general rather than strict guideline.

Twenty-two of the letters are identical in form to letters of the English alphabet (q, w, x,andybeing omitted). The remaining six havediacriticalmarks:ĉ,ĝ,ĥ,ĵ,ŝ,andŭ– that is,c, g, h, j,andscircumflex,andubreve.

Standard alphabet

Standard Esperanto orthography uses theLatin script.

Sound values

Main article:Esperanto phonology

The letters have approximately the sound values of theIPA,with the exception ofc[t͡s]and the letters with diacritics:ĉ[t͡ʃ],ĝ[d͡ʒ],ĥ[x],ĵ[ʒ],ŝ[ʃ],ŭ[u̯].Jtranscribes twoallophonicsounds, consonantal[j](the Englishysound, as inyou) and vocalic[i̯].

Majuscule forms(also calleduppercaseorcapital letters)

A

B

C

Ĉ

D

E

F

G

Ĝ

H

Ĥ

I

J

Ĵ

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

Ŝ

T

U

Ŭ

V

Z

Minuscule forms(also calledlowercaseorsmall letters)

a

b

c

ĉ

d

e

f

g

ĝ

h

ĥ

i

j

ĵ

k

l

m

n

o

p

r

s

ŝ

t

u

ŭ

v

z

Principal IPA values

a

b

t͜s

t͜ʃ

d

e

f

ɡ

d͜ʒ

h

x

i

j,i̯

ʒ

k

l

m

n

o

p

r

s

ʃ

t

u

u̯

v

z

There is a nearly one-to-one correspondence of letter to sound. For those who consider/d͜z/to be a phoneme, Esperanto contains one consonantaldigraph,⟨dz⟩.Beside the dual use of⟨j⟩,allophony is found in place assimilation of/m/and/n/,the latter of which for example is frequently pronounced[ŋ]beforegandk.

Phonemic change is perhaps limited to voicing assimilation, as in the sequencekzofekzemplo,('(an) example') which is frequently pronounced/ɡz/.In Zamenhof's writing, obstruents with different voicing do not meet in compound words, but rather are separated by an epenthetic vowel such aso,to avoid this effect.

Non-Esperantized names are given an Esperanto approximation of their original pronunciation, at least by speakers without command of the original language. Hard⟨c⟩is read ask,⟨qu⟩askv,⟨w⟩asv,⟨x⟩asks,and⟨y⟩asjif a consonant, or asiif a vowel. The English digraph⟨th⟩is read ast.When there is no close equivalent, the difficult sounds may be given the Esperanto values of the letters in the orthography or roman transcription, accommodating the constraints of Esperanto phonology. So, for example,Winchester(the English city) is pronounced (and may be spelled)Vinĉester/vint͜ʃester/,as Esperantoŭdoes not occur at the beginning of ordinary words.Changzhougenerally becomesĈanĝo/t͜ʃand͜ʒo/,as Esperanto has nongorousound. There are no strict rules, however; speakers may try for greater fidelity, for example by pronouncing theganduinChangzhou:Ĉangĝoŭ/t͜ʃaŋɡd͜ʒou̯/(despite there being nogsound in the Chinese pronunciation). The original stress may be kept, if it is known.

Origin

See also:Proto-Esperanto

The script resembles Western Slavic Latin alphabets but usescircumflexesinstead ofcaronsfor the lettersĉ,ĝ,ĥ,ĵ,andŝ.Also, the non-Slavic bases of the lettersĝandĵ,rather than Slavicdžandž,help preserve the printed appearance of Latinate and Germanic vocabulary such asĝenerala"general" (adjective) andĵurnalo"journal". The lettervstands for eithervorwof other languages. The letterŭof the diphthongsaŭandeŭresemble theBelarusianŁacinka alphabet.

Zamenhof took advantage of the fact that typewriters for the French language (which, in his lifetime, served as an internationallingua francafor educated people) possess adead keyfor the circumflex diacritic: thus, anyone who could avail himself of a French typewriter could typeĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝand their uppercase counterparts with no problem. French typewriters also include the letter⟨ù⟩,which Francophone Esperantists have long used as a substitute for Esperantoŭ.With the advent of personal computers, French-language keyboards still possess a dead-key ^, but whether it can be used to type Esperanto consonants may depend on the underlying software. Zamenhof's choice of accented letters was familiar to the speakers of some Slavic languages, for instance, Czech and Slovak, where the sounds of Esperantoĉandŝare represented by the lettersčandš,respectively; and Belarusian, because Esperantoŭbears the same relation touas Belarusian Cyrillicўbears toу.

Geographic names may diverge from English spelling, especially for the lettersx,w,quandgu,as inVaŝintono"Washington, D.C.",Meksiko"Mexico City",andGvatemalo"Guatemala".Other spelling differences appear when Esperanto words are based on the pronunciation rather than the spelling of English place names, such asBrajtonoforBrighton.

Variations

Since all letters with diacritics are unique,they are often simplified inhandwriting.The most common diacritic to be simplified is the circumflex, which often appears more like amacronoracute accent(e.g.ḡorǵinstead ofĝ).

Names of the letters of the alphabet

Zamenhofsimply tacked an-oonto each consonant to create the name of the letter, with the vowels representing themselves:a, bo, co, ĉo, do, e, fo,etc. The diacritics are frequently mentioned overtly. For instance,ĉmay be calledĉo ĉapelaorco ĉapela,fromĉapelo(a hat), andŭmay be calledŭo lunetaoru luneta,fromluno(a moon) plus the diminutive-et-.This is the only system that is widely accepted and in practical use.

The letters of theISO basic Latin alphabetnot found in the Esperanto alphabet have distinct names, much as letters of the Greek alphabet do.⟨q⟩,⟨x⟩,⟨y⟩arekuo, ikso, ipsilono;⟨w⟩has been calledduobla vo(double V),vavo(using Waringhien's name ofvabelow),vuo(proposed by Sergio Pokrovskij),germana vo(German V), andĝermana vo(GermanicV).

However, while this is fine forinitialismssuch asktp[kotopo] foretc.,it can be problematic when spelling out names. For example, several consonantal distinctions are difficult for many nationalities, who normally rely on the fact that Esperanto seldom uses these sounds to distinguish words (that is, they do not form manyminimal pairs). Thus the pairs of letter namesĵo–ĝo, ĥo–ho(orĥo–ko), co–ĉo(orco–so, co–to), lo–ro,andŭo–vo(orvo–bo) are problematic. In addition, over a noisy telephone connection, it quickly becomes apparent thatvoicingdistinctions can be difficult to make out: noise confounds the pairspo–bo, to–do, ĉo–ĝo, ko–go, fo–vo, so–zo, ŝo–ĵo,as well as the nasalsmo–no.

There have been several proposals to resolve this problem.Gaston Waringhienproposed changing the vowel of voicedobstruentstoa,so that at least voicing is not problematic. Also changed toaareh, n, r,distinguishing them fromĥ, m, l.The result is perhaps the most common alternative in use:

a, ba, co, ĉo, da, e, fo, ga, ĝa, ha, ĥo, i, jo, ĵa, ko, lo, mo, na, o, po, ra, so, ŝo, to, u, ŭo, va, za

However, this still requires overt mention of the diacritics, and even so does not reliably distinguishba–va, co–so, ĉo–ŝo,orĝa–ĵa.

The proposal closest to international norms (and thus the easiest to remember) that clarifies all the above distinctions is a modification of a proposal byKálmán Kalocsay.As with Zamenhof, vowels stand for themselves, but it follows the international standard of placing voweleafter a consonant by default(be, ce, de, ge),but beforesonorants(el, en)andvoicelessfricatives(ef, es).The vowelais used for⟨h⟩and the voicelessplosives⟨p⟩,⟨t⟩,⟨k⟩,after the international nameshafor⟨h⟩andkafor⟨k⟩;the French nameĵiis used for⟨ĵ⟩,the Greek nameĥi (chi)for⟨ĥ⟩,and the English namearfor⟨r⟩.The letter⟨v⟩has theivowel ofĵi,distinguishing it from⟨b⟩,but the other voiced fricative,⟨z⟩,does not, to avoid the problem of itpalatalizingand being confused withĵi.The diphthong offglide⟨ŭ⟩is namedeŭ,the only real possibility given Esperantophonotacticsbesidesaŭ,which, as the word for "or", could cause confusion. The letter⟨m⟩is calledomto distinguish it from⟨n⟩;the voweloalliterates well in the alphabetical sequenceel, om, en, o, pa.There are other patterns to the vowels in theABC rhyme:The lines start witha i a iand finish witha a e e.The letters with diacritics are placed at the end of the rhyme, taking the place ofw, x, yin other Latin alphabets, so as not to disrupt the pattern of letters many people learned as children. All this makes the system more easily memorized than competing proposals. The modified Kalocsayabecedaryis:

a, be, ce, de, e, ef, ge, ha,

i, je, ka, el, om, en, o, pa,

ar, es, ta, u, vi, ĉa, ĝe,

ĥi kaj ĵi, eŝ, eŭ kaj ze,

plus ku', ikso, ipsilono,

jen la abece-kolono.

(kajmeans "and". The last line reads:here is the ABC column)

Where letters are still confused, such asesvseŝoravsha,mention can be made of the diacritic(eŝ ĉapela),or to the manner of articulation of the sound(ha brueta"breathy aitch" ). Quite commonly, however, people will use theaitch as in housestrategy used in English.

Spelling alphabets

Another strategy is to use aspelling alphabet(literuma alfabeto), which substitutes ordinary words for letters. The following words are sometimes seen:

From a German–Esperanto dictionary byErich-Dieter Krause:

Asfalto, Barbaro, Centimetro, Ĉefo, Doktoro, Elemento, Fabriko, Gumo, Ĝirafo, Hotelo, Ĥaoso, Insekto, Jubileo, Ĵurnalo, Kilogramo, Legendo, Maŝino, Naturo, Oktobro, Papero, Kuo, Rekordo, Salato, Ŝilingo, Triumfo, Universo, Universo-hoketo, Vulkano, Ĝermana vo, Ikso, Ipsilono, Zinko

A proposal bySimon Edward Adrian PayneinMonato:

akvo, baldaŭ, cedro, ĉirkaŭ, dolĉa, eĥo, fajfi, golfo, ĝis, hejme, ĥoro, iĝi, jaĥto, ĵuri, korpo, lingvo, morgaŭ, nokto, ofte, pelvo, kuo, riĉa, sankta, ŝaŭmi, tempo, uzi, ŭa-ŭa, vespo, vavo, ikso, ipsilono, zorgi

A proposal byGerrit François Makkink,in which most words are tetrasyllabic so that the syllable beginning with the letter in question receives secondary stress (though only inVarsoviodo both stressed syllables begin with the letter):

Akademio, bondeziro, centjariĝo, Ĉe-metodo, delegito, Esperanto, Fundamento, gramatiko, ĝisrevido, harmonio, ĥorkantado, internacia, jubileo, ĵurnalisto, kalendaro, Ludoviko, modernigo, necesejo, okupita, propagando, kuo, redaktoro, sekretario, ŝatokupo, telefono, universala, u-supersigno, Varsovio, vuo, ikso, ipsilono, Zamenhofo

TheInternational League of Esperantist Radio Amateurs(ILERA) uses the following adaptation of theInternational Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet(ICAO and NATO "phonetic" alphabet):

alfa, bravo, carli, delta, eko, fokstrot, golf, hotel, india, juliet, kilo, lima, majk, november, oskar, papa, kebek, romeo, siera, tango, uniform, viktor, ŭiski~viski, eksrej, janki, zulu

ILERA also modifies the numeralsses'6' andsep'7' tosisandsepento make them more distinct, and uses the nominal formnulofor zero.

ASCII transliteration

Main article:Substitutions of the Esperanto alphabet

There are two common conventions for inputting and typesetting Esperanto in the ISO basic Latin alphabet when proper orthography is inconvenient. Zamenhof had suggested replacing the circumflex letters withdigraphsinh,the so-called "h-system", thus:ch, gh, hh, jh, shforĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝanduforŭ,with an apostrophe or hyphen to disambiguate actual sequences of these letters (e.g.ses-hora).With the advent of computer word-processing, the so-called "x-system", with digraphs inxfor all diacritics, has become equally popular:cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux.The wordsŝanĝi"to change" andĵaŭde"on Thursday" are writtenshanghi,jhaudeandsxangxi,jxauxde,respectively, in the two systems. The h-system has a more conventional appearance, but because the letterxdoes not occur in Esperanto, it is fairly straightforward to automatically convert text written in the x-system into standard orthography; it also produces better results with alphabetic sorting.

Punctuation

As with most languages, punctuation is not completely standardized, but in Esperanto there is the additional complication of multiple competing national traditions.

Commasare frequently used to introduce subordinate clauses (that is, beforeke"that" or theki-correlatives):

Mi ne scias, kiel fari tion.(I don't know how to do that.)

The comma is also used for thedecimal point,while thousands are separated by non-breaking spaces:12345678,9,or sometimes by apostrophes:Li enspezis $3'300'000.

Thequestion mark(?) and theexclamation mark(!) are used at the end of a clause and may be internal to a sentence. Question words generally come at the beginning of a question, obviating the need forSpanish-style inverted question marks.

Periodsmay be used to indicateinitialisms:k.t.p.orktpforkaj tiel plu(et cetera), but not abbreviations that retain the grammatical suffixes. Instead, a hyphen optionally replaces the missing letters:D-roorDroforDoktoro(Dr). With ordinal numerals, the adjectivalaand accusativenmay be superscripted:13aor13^a(13th). The abbreviationkis used without a period forkaj(and); theampersand(&) is not found.Roman numeralsare also avoided.

Thehyphenis also occasionally used to clarify compounds, and to join grammatical suffixes to proper names that haven't been Esperantized or don't have a nominal-osuffix, such as the accusative onKalocsay-norKálmán-on.The proximate particleĉiused with correlatives, such asĉi tiu'this one' andĉi tie'here', may be poetically used with nouns and verbs as well(ĉi jaro'this year',esti ĉi'to be here'), but if these phrases are then changed to adjectives or adverbs, a hyphen is used:ĉi-jare'this year',ĉi-landa birdo'a bird of this land'.

Quotation marksshow the greatest variety of any punctuation. The use of Esperanto quotation marks was never stated in Zamenhof's work; it was assumed that a printer would use whatever was available, usually the national standard of the printer's country.Em dashes(—...),guillemets(«...» or reversed »...«), double quote marks ( “...” and German-style „... “) and more are all found. Since the age of word-processing, however, American-style quotation marks are the most widespread. Quotations may be introduced with either acommaor acolon.

Time and date format is not standardized among Esperantists, but internationally unambiguous formats such as 1970-01-01 (ISO) or 1-jan-1970 are preferred when the date is not spelled out in full ( "la 1-a de januaro 1970" ).

Capitalization

Capitalizationis used for the first word of a sentence and for proper names when used as nouns. Names of months, days of the week, ethnicities, languages, and the adjectival forms of proper names are not typically capitalized(anglo"an Englishman",angla"English",usona"US American" ), though national norms may override such generalizations. Titles are more variable: both the Romance style of capitalizing only the first word of the title and the English style of capitalizing all lexical words are found.

All capitals or small capitals are used foracronymsandinitialismsof proper names, likeTEJO,but not common expressions likektp(etc.). Small capitals are also a common convention forfamily names,to avoid the confusion of varying national naming conventions:KalocsayKálmán,LeslieCheungKwok-wing.

Camel case,with or without a hyphen, may occur when a prefix is added to a proper noun:la geZamenhofoj(the Zamenhofs),pra-Esperanto(Proto-Esperanto). It is also used forRussian-stylesyllabic acronyms, such as the nameReVoforReta Vortaro( "Internet Dictionary" ), which is homonymous withrevo(dream). Occasionally mixed capitalization will be used for orthographic puns, such asespERAnto,which stands for theesperanta radikala asocio(Radical Esperanto Association).

Zamenhof contrasted informalciwith formal, and capitalized,Vias the second-person singular pronouns. However, lower-caseviis now used as the second-person pronoun regardless of number.

Spesmilo symbol

TheSmsign

Main article:Spesmilo

Unique to the Esperanto script is thespesmilo(1000specie) sign,⟨₷⟩,anSmmonogramfor an obsolete international unit of auxiliary Esperanto currency used by a few British and Swiss banks before World War I. It is often transcribed asSm,usually italic.

Braille, fingerspelling, and Morse code

Esperanto braille alphabet

⠁ a

⠃ b

⠉ c

⠩ ĉ

⠙ d

⠑ e

⠋ f

⠛ g

⠻ ĝ

⠓ h

⠳ ĥ

⠊ i

⠚ j

⠺ ĵ

⠅ k

⠇ l

⠍ m

⠝ n

⠕ o

⠏ p

⠗ r

⠎ s

⠮ ŝ

⠞ t

⠥ u

⠬ ŭ

⠧ v

⠵ z

⠟ q

⠾ w

⠭ x

⠽ y

Main articles:Esperanto BrailleandEsperanto manual alphabet

Esperanto versions ofbrailleandMorse codeinclude the six diacritic letters.

An Esperanto braille magazine,Aŭroro,has been published since 1920.

Esperanto
Morse code

Ĉ	▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄
Ĝ	▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄
Ĥ	▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄
Ĵ	▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄
Ŝ	▄ ▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄
Ŭ	▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄

In Morse code, a dot is added to C and J to derive Ĉ and Ĵ, a dash–dot is added to G and S to derive Ĝ and Ŝ, a dash is added to U to derive Ǔ, and the four dots of H are changed to four dashes for Ĥ. However, users often substitute these novel letters with digraphsch, gh, jh, shetc.

Signunoalphabet

There is a proposedmanual alphabetas part of theSignunoproject. Signuno, as a signed variant of Esperanto, is itself a manuallogographicEsperanto orthography. The majority of letters of the manual alphabet resemble those of theAmerican manual alphabet,but also of theFrench manual alphabetand others. The diacritic letters Ĉ, Ĝ, Ĥ, Ĵ, Ŝ, Ŭ have their own signs, and J and Z are distinct from other alphabets, as none of the Signuno letters involve motion. Digits are formed by extending the fingers from the index to the pinkie for 1 to 4, from the pinkie to the thumb (keeping the middle finger down) for 6 to 9, and from the thumb to index for 11 and 12; the last two are used for months and hours. Zero is represented by the fist, 5 by the whole hand extended, and 10 as the letter X.

Other scripts

The Shavian alphabet adapted to write Esperanto: alphabet and ligatures

antaŭ kvar monatoj(four months ago) in the invented script from the TV seriesResident Alien.Script reads right to left;uandvare not distinguished.

The fullResident Alienalphabet, digits and punctuation; the punctuation is displayed at reduced font size.

TheShavian alphabet,which was designed for English, was modified for use with Esperanto by John Wesley Starling. Though not widely used, at least one booklet has been published with sample Shavian texts.Not all letters are equivalent to their English values, and special forms of the letters⟨n⟩and⟨s⟩have been added for the accusative case ending and verbal inflections; the grammatical endings and the wordsla'the',aŭ'or' andkaj'and' are written as ligatures.

The vowels necessarily differ from English. Esperantoa e i o utake the letters for English/æɛɪəɒ/,with more regard to graphic symmetry than phonetic faithfulness in the cases ofoandu.Ctakes the letter for/θ/,theCastilianvalue ofcbeforeeandi,andĥthat for/ŋ/,the inverse of the letter for/h/.The most divergent letters are those formandn,which are/ʊuː/in English, but which are graphically better suited to be distinct letters than English Shavian/mn/.

The US television seriesResident Alienuses an invented script that does not distinguishuandv,and ignores diacritics, to transcribe Esperanto as the alien language. It is written right to left.

The Cyrillic Esperanto Alphabet andpangramEble ĉiu kvazaŭ-deca fuŝĥoraĵo ĝojigos homtipon.(Maybe every quasi-fitting bungle-choir makes a human type happy.)

TheCyrillic scripthas also been adapted to write Esperanto.

An EsperantopangramshowingLaŭ Ludoviko Zamenhof bongustas freŝa ĉeĥa manĝaĵo kun spicoj.in the Juliamo alphabet.

The 2017 Japanese-languagevisual novelThe Expression Amrilatoand its 2021 sequelDistant Memoraĵofeature a language namedJuliamothat is actually Esperanto in a modified Latin alphabet.

Computer input

See also:Inputting Esperanto text on computers

The Esperanto alphabet is part of theLatin-3andUnicodecharacter sets, and is included inWGL4. The code points and HTML entities for the Esperanto characters with diacritics and the spesmilo sign are:

Glyph	Codepoint	Name	HTML entities
Ĉ	U+0108	Latin capital letter c with circumflex	Ĉ, Ĉ, Ĉ
ĉ	U+0109	Latin small letter c with circumflex	ĉ, ĉ, ĉ
Ĝ	U+011C	Latin capital letter g with circumflex	Ĝ, Ĝ, Ĝ
ĝ	U+011D	Latin small letter g with circumflex	ĝ, ĝ, ĝ
Ĥ	U+0124	Latin capital letter h with circumflex	Ĥ, Ĥ, Ĥ
ĥ	U+0125	Latin small letter h with circumflex	ĥ, ĥ, ĥ
Ĵ	U+0134	Latin capital letter j with circumflex	Ĵ, Ĵ, Ĵ
ĵ	U+0135	Latin small letter j with circumflex	ĵ, ĵ, ĵ
Ŝ	U+015C	Latin capital letter s with circumflex	Ŝ, Ŝ, Ŝ
ŝ	U+015D	Latin small letter s with circumflex	ŝ, ŝ, ŝ
Ŭ	U+016C	Latin capital letter u with breve	Ŭ, Ŭ, Ŭ
ŭ	U+016D	Latin small letter u with breve	ŭ, ŭ, ŭ
₷	U+20B7	Spesmilo sign	₷, ₷

See also

• Orthography
• Ĉ,Ĝ,Ĥ,Ĵ,Ŝ,Ŭ,₷