Lesson 1 - Spelling & pronunciation

The spelling of Esperanto is very simple. Every phoneme corresponds to only one letter of the Esperanto alphabet, and vice versa. The Esperanto alphabet is a variant of the Latin alphabet that differs slightly from the English version. The letters q, w, x and y are missing, but the letters c, g, h, j, s can be used with circumflex accents, and are treated as separate letters with regard to alphabetical ordering. The same applies to the letter u with a breve over it.

The following table shows the Esperanto alphabet. At the time of writing there are not many computer systems that can display more than a few hundred different characters, and the specific Esperanto letters are usually not among them. Therefore the substitutes in the column Alternative will be used in this course.

Letter	Alternative	Pronunciation
		Like a in father but shorter
		Like b in bad
		Like ts in hits
		Like ch in church
		Like d in day
		Like e in get
		Like f in fail
		Like g in get
		Like g in gin
		Like h in help
		Like ch in German Lach
		Like ea in meat but shorter
		Like y in yes
		Like s in leisure
		Like c in clay
		Like l in little
		Like m in mix
		Like n in no
		Like a in wall but shorter
		Like p in spin
		Like r in German rot
		Like s in sit
		Like sh in show
		Like t in stay
		Like oo in food but shorter
		Like w in water
		Like w in German wie
		Like z in zeal

¹ This letter is used in many words from Greek such as arhhitekto (architect), hhaoso (chaos) and hhirurgo (surgeon), but most of these words have an alternative form in which hh has been replaced by k (arkitekto, kaoso, kirurgo).

² This letter is rarely used as a consonant. The only common words where it is used as such are uato (watt) and derived words like kilouato (kilowatt), and even in this case there exists the alternative form vatto³ preferred by many Esperantists. Usually the U with a breve occurs in the diphthong au (pronounced as ow in cow) and the relatively rare diphthong eu (not found in English) which occurs in a few Greek words like eutanazio (euthanasia).

³ The double T in vatto is used to distinguish it from the word for cotton-wool, which is vato. Normally double consonants are confined to compound words such as posttagmezo (post-tag-mezo, lit.: "after-day-middle" = afternoon).

Since Esperanto is no-one's native language it does not matter much if your pronounciation differs somewhat from the description given in the table.

The names of the letters are very simple in Esperanto. The names of the vowel letters are the same as their sounds. The names of the consonant letters are the corresponding sounds followed by o. So we get:

A = a

B = bo

C = co

Ch = cho

etc.

There are also names for q, w, x and y that can for example be used to spell non Esperanto words:

Q = kuo

W = germana (or duobla) vo

X = ikso

Y = ipsilono

In Esperanto, as in English, polysyllabic words have one syllable that is stressed more than the others. However, there is no secondary stress in Esperanto words like the one found in English redecorate where the first syllable is stressed weakly and the second one strongly. The stress in Esperanto words always falls on the penultimate (i.e. the last but one) syllable. This can result in words that are stressed differently from related words in European languages and the student should fight the tendency to stress those words as he is used to.

Just as in English stressed syllables are only really stressed if the words in which they appear are stressed themselves.

Exercise 1-1

Pronounce these Esperanto names of continents, countries and cities. For the convenience of the Esperanto novice the stressed syllables are in bold type.

Afriko, Brazilo, Londono, Munkeno (Munich), Kolombio, Europo, Nova Jorko, Tunizio, Manchestro, Parizo, Pekino (Peking), Akeno (Aix-la-Chapelle), Panamo, Tajlando, Peruo, Romo, Birmo, Buenosajreso.