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Esperanto is written in aLatin-script alphabet of twenty-eight letters, with upper and lower case. This is supplemented bypunctuation marks and by variouslogograms, such as thedigits 0–9, 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.[1]
Twenty-two of the letters are identical in form to letters of the English alphabet (q, w, x, andy being omitted). The remaining six havediacritical marks:ĉ,ĝ,ĥ,ĵ,ŝ, andŭ – that is,c, g, h, j, andscircumflex, andubreve.
Standard Esperanto orthography uses theLatin script.
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].J transcribes two sounds, consonantal[j] (the Englishy sound, as inyou) and vocalic[i̯].[1]
| Majuscule forms(also calleduppercase orcapital 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 calledlowercase orsmall 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[note 1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | t͜s | t͜ʃ | d | e | f | ɡ | d͜ʒ | h | x | i | i̯ | j | 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. Diphthongs such asaŭ andeŭ require two letters.⟨J⟩ has dual consonantal and vocalic use, parallel to Esperanto having both consonantal⟨v⟩ and vocalic⟨ŭ⟩. For those who consider/d͜z/ to be a phoneme, Esperanto contains one consonantaldigraph as well,⟨dz⟩.[2] Allophony has been noted in the vowels (for example in open vsclosed syllables) and is found in the place assimilation of/m/ and/n/, the latter of which for example is frequently pronounced[ŋ] beforeg andk for speakers of language backgrounds that do the same.
Phonemic change is perhaps limited to voicing assimilation ofobstruents, as in the sequencekz ofekzemplo, ('(an) example') which is 'inevitably' pronounced/ɡz/ in normal speech, though purists try to pronounce it/kz/.[3] In Zamenhof's writing, obstruents with different voicing such ask andz do not meet in compoundlexical words, but rather are separated by an epenthetic vowel, such aso, to avoid such assimilation, though placing such letters together is common among speakers whose language background allows it.
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⟩ asj if a consonant, or asi if 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 Esperantoŭ does not occur at the beginning of ordinary words.[4]Changzhou generally becomesĈanĝo/t͜ʃand͜ʒo/, as Esperanto has nong orou sound. There are no strict rules, however; speakers may try for greater fidelity, for example by pronouncing theg andu inChangzhou:Ĉangĝoŭ/t͜ʃaŋɡd͜ʒou̯/ (despite there being nog sound in the Chinese pronunciation). The original stress may be kept, if it is known.
The script resembles Western Slavic Latin alphabets but usescircumflexes instead ofcarons for the lettersĉ,ĝ,ĥ,ĵ, andŝ. Also, the non-Slavic bases of the lettersĝ andĵ, rather than Slavicdž andž, help preserve the printed appearance of Latinate and Germanic vocabulary such asĝenerala "general" (adjective) andĵurnalo "journal". The letterv stands for eitherv orw of other languages. The letterŭ of the diphthongsaŭ andeŭ resemble theBelarusianŁacinka alphabet.
Zamenhof took advantage of the fact that typewriters for the French language (which, in his lifetime, served as an internationallingua franca for educated people) possess adead key for the circumflex diacritic: thus, anyone with access to a French typewriter could typeĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ and 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 Esperantoĉ andŝ are represented by the lettersč andš, respectively; and Belarusian, because Esperantoŭ bears the same relation tou as Belarusian Cyrillicў bears toу.
Geographic names may diverge from English spelling, especially for the lettersx,w,qu andgu, 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 asBrajtono forBrighton.
Since all letters with diacritics are unique,[note 2] they are often simplified inhandwriting. The most common diacritic to be simplified is the circumflex, which often appears more like amacron oracute accent (e.g.ḡ orǵ instead ofĝ).
Zamenhof simply tacked an-o onto 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,ĉ may be calledĉo ĉapela orco ĉapela, fromĉapelo (a hat), andŭ may be calledŭo luneta oru 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 alphabet not 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 ofva below),vuo (proposed by Sergio Pokrovskij),germana vo (German V), andĝermana vo (Germanic V).[5]
However, while this is fine forinitialisms such 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 thatvoicing distinctions 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 Waringhien proposed changing the vowel of voicedobstruents toa, so that at least voicing is not problematic. Also changed toa areh, n, r, distinguishing them fromĥ, m, l. The result is perhaps the most common alternative in use:
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 vowele after a consonant by default(be, ce, de, ge), but beforesonorants(el, en) andvoicelessfricatives(ef, es). The vowela is used for⟨h⟩ and the voicelessplosives⟨p⟩,⟨t⟩,⟨k⟩, after the international namesha for⟨h⟩ andka for⟨k⟩; the French nameĵi is used for⟨ĵ⟩, the Greek nameĥi (chi) for⟨ĥ⟩, and the English namear for⟨r⟩. The letter⟨v⟩ has thei vowel ofĵi, distinguishing it from⟨b⟩, but the other voiced fricative,⟨z⟩, does not, to avoid the problem of itpalatalizing and being confused withĵi. The diphthong offglide⟨ŭ⟩ is namedeŭ, the only real possibility given Esperantophonotactics besidesaŭ, which, as the word for "or", could cause confusion. The letter⟨m⟩ is calledom to distinguish it from⟨n⟩; the vowelo alliterates 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 i and finish witha a e e. The letters with diacritics are placed at the end of the rhyme, taking the place ofw, x, y in 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 Kalocsayabecedary is:
(kaj means "and". The last line reads:here is the ABC column)
Where letters are still confused, such ases vseŝ ora vsha, 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 house strategy used in English.
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:[6]
A proposal bySimon Edward Adrian Payne inMonato:[7]
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 inVarsovio do both stressed syllables begin with the letter):[8]
TheInternational League of Esperantist Radio Amateurs (ILERA) uses the following adaptation of theInternational Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet (ICAO and NATO "phonetic" alphabet):
ILERA also modifies the numeralsses '6' andsep '7' tosis andsepen to make them more distinct, and uses the nominal formnulo for zero.
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 withdigraphs inh, the so-called "h-system", thus:ch, gh, hh, jh, sh forĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ andu forŭ, with an apostrophe or hyphen to disambiguate actual sequences of these letters (e.g.ses-hora).[9] With the advent of computer word-processing, the so-called "x-system", with digraphs inx for all diacritics, has become equally popular:[citation needed]cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux. The wordsŝanĝi "to change" andĵaŭde "on Thursday" are writtenshanghi,jhaude andsxangxi,jxauxde, respectively, in the two systems. The h-system has a more conventional appearance, but because the letterx does 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.
As with most languages, punctuation is not completely standardized, but in Esperanto there is the additional complication of multiple competing national traditions.
Commas are frequently used to introduce subordinate clauses (that is, beforeke "that" or theki- correlatives):
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.
Periods may be used to indicateinitialisms:k.t.p. orktp forkaj tiel plu (et cetera), but not abbreviations that retain the grammatical suffixes. Instead, a hyphen optionally replaces the missing letters:D-ro orDro forDoktoro (Dr). With ordinal numerals, the adjectivala and accusativen may be superscripted:13a or13a (13th). The abbreviationk is used without a period forkaj (and); theampersand (&) is not found.Roman numerals are also avoided.
Thehyphen is 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-o suffix, such as the accusative onKalocsay-n orKálmán-on. The proximate particleĉi used 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'.[10]
Quotation marks show 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 acomma or 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 is 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 foracronyms andinitialisms of 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:Kalocsay Kálmán,LeslieCheung Kwok-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-style syllabic acronyms, such as the nameReVo forReta 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 informalci with formal, and capitalized,Vi as the second-person singular pronouns. However, lower-casevi is now used as the second-person pronoun regardless of number.
Unique to the Esperanto script is thespesmilo (1000specie) sign,⟨₷⟩, anSmmonogram for 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.
| ⠁ 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 |
Esperanto versions ofbraille andMorse code include the six diacritic letters.
An Esperanto braille magazine,Aŭroro, has been published since 1920.
| 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, sh etc.[9]
There is a proposedmanual alphabet as part of theSignuno project. Signuno, as a signed variant of Esperanto, is itself a manuallogographic Esperanto orthography. The majority of letters of the manual alphabet resemble those of theAmerican manual alphabet, but also of theFrench manual alphabet and 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.[11]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.[12]
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.[13] 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 u take the letters for English/æɛɪəɒ/, with more regard to graphic symmetry than phonetic faithfulness in the cases ofo andu.C takes the letter for/θ/, theCastilian value ofc beforee andi, andĥ that for/ŋ/, the inverse of the letter for/h/.[note 5] The most divergent letters are those form andn, which are/ʊuː/ in English, but which are graphically better suited to be distinct letters than English Shavian/mn/.
The US television seriesResident Alien uses an invented script that does not distinguishu andv, and ignores diacritics, to transcribe Esperanto as the alien language. It is written right to left.
TheCyrillic script has also been adapted to write Esperanto.[14]
The 2017 Japanese-languagevisual novelThe Expression Amrilato and its 2021 sequelDistant Memoraĵo feature a language namedJuliamo that is actually Esperanto in a modified Latin alphabet.
The Esperanto alphabet is part of theLatin-3 andUnicode character 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 | ₷, ₷ |
duobla vo aŭĝermana vo. Nomo de neesperanta grafemo, kun la formo W, w, (prononcata v aŭ ŭ, depende de la lingvoj)[double V orGermanic V. Name of a non-Esperantographeme, with the form W, w, (pronounced v or ǔ [that is, with the sound of English "v" or "w"], depending on the language)]