Esperanto · Chapter 1 · Lesson 2 · Grammar primer
The alphabet: 28 letters, one sound each
The six hatted letters, how to type them when your keyboard cannot, and the stress rule that never has an exception. Ten minutes, and you can pronounce every word in the language.
The short version
One letter, one sound, no exceptions
Every Esperanto letter makes exactly one sound, and every sound has exactly one letter, so you can read aloud a word you have never seen and be right. Stress is just as fixed: always the next-to-last syllable, in every word in the language.
amiko - a-MI-ko; Esperanto - es-pe-RAN-to
No hats on your keyboard? Use x
Six letters wear hats: cx gx hx jx sx ux is how you type cxu, gxi and sxi when your keyboard cannot make them. It is unambiguous because x is not a letter of the Esperanto alphabet at all - which is exactly why the convention chose it.
cxu = the hatted c-word for questions; ankaux = also
The letters worth a warning
| Letter | IPA | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| c | /ts/ | "ts" as in cats. Never "k", never "s". |
| ĉ | /tʃ/ | "ch" as in church. |
| ĝ | /dʒ/ | "j" as in jam. |
| ĥ | /x/ | Scottish loch. The rarest letter in the language; clear your throat with confidence. |
| ĵ | /ʒ/ | "s" as in measure. |
| ŝ | /ʃ/ | "sh" as in ship. |
| ŭ | /w/ | "w", and only ever after a or e: aŭ, eŭ. |
| a e i o u | /a e i o u/ | Pure vowels, as in Spanish: ah, eh, ee, oh, oo. No drifting off into diphthongs; an Esperanto o stays where you put it. |
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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