Esperanto spelling

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The Esperanto alphabet

Aa Bb Cc Ĉĉ Dd Ee Ff Gg Ĝĝ Hh Ĥĥ Ii Jj Ĵĵ Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Rr Ss Ŝŝ Tt Uu Ŭŭ Vv Zz

Esperanto is written using an alphabet that consists of 28 letters . 22 of them are identical to the German alphabet. The letters q, w, x, y and the German special characters ä, ö, ü, ß are missing. The remaining six letters have a “hat”: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ (c, g, h, j and s with circumflex ), and ŭ (u with breve ).

The Fundamento , the official set of rules of the Esperanto language, lists the letters and explains in the German text: “Note: ĝ is like the English g in gentleman; the ĵ reads like the French j in journal; ŭ - as the short u in Believe (only used after a vowel). If there are not enough types in the print, replace ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ with ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, u. "

Rule 9 Fundamento reads: “9. Every word is read as it is written. ”The spelling of Esperanto is phonematic , which means that exactly one letter is assigned to each phoneme and exactly one phoneme is assigned to each letter.

Spelling of words

In Esperanto there are no fixed rules other than the above rule, but there are a number of common practices. Basically, all words are written in lower case. Exceptions are the first word in the sentence and proper names of people and places, but not of countries, their inhabitants and languages. The exception to this is "Esperanto", as the language was originally published as "Internacia lingvo" (International Language) by "D-ro Esperanto" (Dr. Esperanto) and the name is thus derived from a personal name.

The word formation takes place according to a building block system. Accordingly, all letters of the original parts are written in a compilation, even if two identical letters follow one another. In Affix system of Esperanto that is not possible, but rather in combination of two root words . In this case, the suffix “o”, analogous to the German tie-s, is usually inserted as a connecting vowel , but rarely “a”, “e” or “i”, all of which are allowed.

A hyphen between components is always possible, but should be avoided because of the fluency of the reading and the inaudibility. This becomes problematic in connection with the origin of the respective speaker. Germans usually articulate clear pauses, while other native speakers tend to blur. An example to illustrate this: There is both “e-letero” (e-letter) and “eletero”, which is composed of the words “el” (from) and “etero” (ether), with a poetic translation that corresponds to the meaning “Coming from the celestial spheres” would be.

With a few exceptions, there are also no double consonants . A well-known special case is "finno" (Finnish), corresponding to "finnlando". The reason lies in the international recognition and the fact that a collision with the word "fino" (end) is avoided.

A blending of letters to a new letter does not take place in Esperanto.

punctuation

Punctuation is not defined and is subject to the familiar customs of European languages. Thus, only the use of the full stop and the colon is uniform, while the comma is used quite differently. It is generally considered good style if interrupting parts, i.e. subordinate clauses or insertions, are marked with commas .

Highlighting and verbatim speech, which are marked with quotation marks in German , are completely unregulated . In addition to other symbols, the opposite use in neighboring countries is also possible. For some time now, the French or US versions have been gaining ground. On the other hand, " The Hobbit " and " The Lord of the Rings " are provided with dashes in the Spanish pattern to identify the verbatim speech.

Alternative spellings

In the early days of Esperanto, it had to be assumed that the new letters were not always available for printing and telegraphy and that a replacement spelling was needed, similar to that for German umlauts. That is why it was already specified in the Fundamento that the consonants can be written without circumflex, but with the following “h”, for example “sh” instead of “ŝ”. In the case of the "ŭ", the certificate is omitted without replacement. Because the foundation was set as the basis on August 9, 1905, the two spellings with circumflex or with the following “h” are the only officially permitted.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b German-language text of the Fundamento