Esperanto orthography facts for kids

Esperanto is a special language created to be easy for people from all over the world to learn and use. It uses an alphabet based on the Latin-script alphabet, just like English! This alphabet has 28 letters, with both big (uppercase) and small (lowercase) versions.

The person who created Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, wanted each letter to make just one sound. This makes it much easier to learn how to read and pronounce words! Besides letters, Esperanto also uses common punctuation marks and symbols like numbers (0-9) and money signs ($ € ¥ £).

Most of Esperanto's letters look just like English letters. There are 22 of them, but four letters you know from English are not used in Esperanto: q, w, x, and y. The other six letters are special because they have little marks above them called diacritics. These are: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ.

The Esperanto Alphabet

Esperanto uses the familiar Latin alphabet, which is the same one used for English and many other languages.

How the Letters Sound

The letters in Esperanto usually make sounds similar to what you might expect. However, some letters are different, especially the ones with special marks!

• c sounds like "ts" in "cats".
• ĉ sounds like "ch" in "chair".
• ĝ sounds like "j" in "jump".
• ĥ sounds like the "ch" in the Scottish word "loch" (a guttural sound).
• ĵ sounds like the "s" in "measure" or "vision".
• ŝ sounds like "sh" in "shoe".
• ŭ sounds like "w" in "cow" or "now" (a very short "u" sound).
• j sounds like "y" in "yes".

Most other letters sound similar to their English counterparts. For example, a sounds like "a" in "father", e like "e" in "bed", i like "ee" in "see", o like "o" in "go", and u like "oo" in "moon".

When you see names from other languages, they are often changed a bit to fit Esperanto sounds. For example, Winchester might become Vinĉester to match Esperanto's sounds.

Where the Alphabet Came From

The Esperanto alphabet looks a bit like alphabets used in some Slavic countries (like Czech or Slovak). However, instead of using a little hook mark (called a caron), Esperanto uses a little hat mark (called a circumflex) on its special letters.

When Zamenhof created Esperanto, he made sure that people with French typewriters could easily type the special letters. French typewriters had a special key that let you add the "hat" mark (circumflex) to letters.

Different Ways to Write Letters

Sometimes, when people write Esperanto by hand, they might simplify the special marks. For example, the circumflex (the hat) might look more like a straight line or a slanted line above the letter.

Naming the Letters

To name the letters, Zamenhof simply added an -o sound to most consonants. Vowels are just called by their own sound. So, you have a, bo, co, ĉo, do, e, fo, and so on.

Sometimes, to make sure people understand which special letter is being talked about, they might add a descriptive word. For example, ĉ might be called ĉo ĉapela (which means "ĉo with a hat") because ĉapelo means "hat". The letter ŭ might be called ŭo luneta (which means "ŭo with a little moon") because luno means "moon".

For letters not in the Esperanto alphabet (like q, x, y, w), they have special names too: kuo, ikso, ipsilono, and duobla vo (double V).

Punctuation in Esperanto

Just like in English, punctuation helps us understand sentences. In Esperanto, punctuation is pretty similar to what you're used to, but there are a few differences.

• Commas: Commas are often used before a new part of a sentence that explains something, especially before words like ke (that) or ki- words (like kiel meaning "how").

* Example: Mi ne scias, kiel fari tion. (I don't know how to do that.) * Commas are also used as the decimal point for numbers, like 12.345.678,9 (which means 12,345,678.9 in English).

• Question Marks and Exclamation Marks: These are used at the end of a question or an excited sentence, just like in English.
• Periods: Periods are used at the end of sentences. They can also be used for abbreviations like k.t.p. for kaj tiel plu (which means "etc." or "and so on").
• Hyphens: Hyphens are sometimes used to make compound words clearer or to add grammar endings to names that aren't typical Esperanto words.
• Quotation Marks: There are many ways to show quotes in Esperanto, but the most common way now is to use the same double quotation marks you see in English (like "..." ).

Capital Letters

Capital letters are used for the first word of a sentence and for proper names (like a person's name or a city's name).

However, unlike English, names of months, days of the week, nationalities (like "Englishman"), and languages are usually not capitalized in Esperanto. So, you'd write anglo (an Englishman) and angla (English).

Sometimes, all capital letters or small capital letters are used for acronyms (like TEJO, which is a youth organization).

Spesmilo Symbol

The Sm sign

Esperanto also has a unique symbol called the spesmilo (⟨₷⟩). This was a special money unit used by some banks before World War I. It's often written as Sm in italics.

Esperanto in Braille, Fingerspelling, and Morse Code

Esperanto has its own versions of braille (a reading system for blind people) and Morse code (a way to send messages using dots and dashes). These versions include the six special letters with diacritics.

• There's even an Esperanto braille magazine called Aŭroro that has been published since 1920!
• In Morse code, the special Esperanto letters have unique dot-and-dash patterns.
• There's also a proposed manual alphabet (fingerspelling) for Esperanto, which is part of a project called Signuno. This alphabet has unique signs for the special Esperanto letters.

Other Ways to Write Esperanto

People have also adapted Esperanto to be written in other scripts:

• 

  The Shavian alphabet adapted to write Esperanto

The Shavian alphabet, which was first made for English, has been changed to write Esperanto.

• 

  antaŭ kvar monatoj (four months ago) in an invented script from the TV series Resident Alien

In the TV show Resident Alien, an invented script is used to write Esperanto, but it doesn't show the special diacritic marks.

• 

  Ĉu vi parolas la rusan? (Do you speak Russian?) written in the Cyrillic script

The Cyrillic script (used for Russian and other languages) has also been adapted for Esperanto.

• 

  An Esperanto pangram showing Laŭ Ludoviko Zamenhof bongustas freŝa ĉeĥa manĝaĵo kun spicoj. in the Juliamo alphabet.

In a Japanese video game called The Expression Amrilato, a language called Juliamo is actually Esperanto written with a slightly different alphabet.

Using Esperanto on Computers

The Esperanto alphabet is included in modern computer character sets like Unicode. This means you can usually type Esperanto letters on your computer or phone without much trouble.

When it's hard to type the special letters (like on older computers), people often use two common ways to write them:

• H-system: You add an "h" after the letter. For example, ĉ becomes ch, ŝ becomes sh.
• X-system: You add an "x" after the letter. For example, ĉ becomes cx, ŝ becomes sx. This system is popular because the letter "x" isn't used in Esperanto, so it's easy for computers to change "cx" back to "ĉ".

|