Esperanto IPA

Every sound of Esperanto, written in IPA: five vowels, 23 consonants, six diphthongs and one stress rule. Each symbol comes with an Esperanto example and the nearest English sound. To hear them and watch the mouth make them, the Esperanto Sound Lab plays each one.

Here is the good news first. Esperanto is one of the few languages where the IPA is almost redundant. One letter, one sound, one sound, one letter, so the spelling already is the transcription.

This page names the sounds precisely and shows where first-language habits leak in. It is also the cheapest place to learn the symbols themselves.

The 28 letters in IPA

Every letter with its single sound. The alphabet page has the letter names and the typing systems.

That is the whole inventory. There is no q, w, x or y, and no sound that needs two letters. The only neighbour effects are small and automatic: n before g or k, and voicing in fast speech, both covered below.

The five vowels

Esperanto has the same five vowels as Spanish, and the same discipline applies: each one is a single held position, with no glide and no schwa.

Two points matter more than the rest:

• No gliding. English "go" is really [oʊ], and "say" is [eɪ]. Esperanto bona starts and ends the o in the same place.
• No reduction. English turns unstressed vowels into a schwa [ə]. Esperanto never does. In telefono /te.le.ˈfo.no/ all four vowels are full, even though only one is stressed.

How open the e and o are varies between speakers, often with their first language: anywhere from close [e] and [o] to open [ɛ] and [ɔ]. Esperanto has no open-versus-close contrast, so all of these are correct. What marks an accent is the English glide.

The consonants

Organised by manner of articulation. Almost all of them behave as in English, so the notes concentrate on where they do not.

Stops

Affricates

English speakers already make /ts/ in "cats" and "pizza"; the only trap is the spelling.

Fricatives

Two letters, two different sounds: h is the breathy /h/ and ĥ is the scraped /x/. The classic minimal pair is horo (hour) against ĥoro (choir).

Ĥ is the rarest letter in the language, so you will recognise it far more often than you produce it. Several words that once had it now prefer k (ĥemio has largely become kemio).

Nasals, liquids and glides

There is no palatal nasal, no palatal lateral and no velar nasal as a separate phoneme. Before g or k, most speakers move the n back to where the g or k is made, so lingvo is said [ˈliŋ.ɡvo] and banko [ˈbaŋ.ko], with the "ng" of "finger".

That [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/, not a new letter, and a plain [n] there is equally correct.

The six hatted letters

Five carry a circumflex and ŭ carries a breve. Five are sounds English already has; only ĥ is new. Each is a letter in its own right, with its own place in the alphabet.

The r

The r is where speakers vary most. The usual recommendation is a tongue-tip r: either a trill [r] (a quick vibration of the tongue against the ridge behind the upper teeth) or a tap [ɾ] (a single touch of the same place). Both are fully correct.

The uvular r of French and German is common from speakers of those languages and is generally accepted, though teachers steer learners towards the tongue tip. An English approximant [ɹ] is understood but clearly marks the accent.

The only thing that matters is that r is always pronounced: parolas /pa.ˈro.las/, horo /ˈho.ro/, and the r of por /por/ is not dropped as it often is in British English. Unlike Spanish, there is no trill-versus-tap contrast, so there is no minimal pair to fear.

The diphthongs

Esperanto writes its diphthongs with a vowel plus j or ŭ. In IPA they are a vowel followed by a glide, and each one is a single syllable.

The point to hold on to is that aŭ is one syllable. In hodiaŭ /ho.ˈdi.aw/ (today) the stress falls on the di, not on the aŭ, because ŭ is not a vowel and so does not make a syllable of its own.

A vowel followed by i or u is different. In kiu /ˈki.u/ there are two vowels, so there are two syllables.

Stress: always the second-to-last syllable

In IPA the stress mark ˈ sits before the stressed syllable. In Esperanto you can place it without looking anything up.

• Esperanto /es.pe.ˈran.to/, stress on ran.
• telefono /te.le.ˈfo.no/, stress on fo.
• patro /ˈpa.tro/, stress on pa.
• internacia /in.ter.na.ˈtsi.a/, stress on tsi.

(The one oddity is poetry, where a dropped final o, as in dom' for domo, leaves the stress where it was.)

Stress is also the reason a word like familio is four syllables: /fa.mi.ˈli.o/, with the stress on li, not on mi. English speakers tend to compress the -io into one beat, which moves the stress. Say the i and the o separately.

Voicing assimilation: common, not recommended

When two consonants meet, speakers of many languages unconsciously let the second pass its voicing back to the first. English "has to" becomes "hass to"; Russian "от дома" is spoken with a d-like t. Many Esperanto speakers do the same in fast speech.

It rarely causes a misunderstanding, but the standard teaching advice is to resist it, because in principle every letter keeps its sound. So: say each consonant as written. It is the clearest option, and it costs nothing.

Common mistakes, by first language

If you have a first language not on this list, the safest drill is the same for everyone: read a short text aloud, one syllable at a time, with a pure vowel in each.

Where to go next

• Esperanto Sound Lab: hear each sound and watch the mouth making it.
• Esperanto alphabet: the 28 letters, their names and how to type the hatted ones.
• Learn IPA: the free eight-lesson course in the symbols themselves, using real words.
• The IPA charts: the full consonant and vowel charts, with the mouth map.

What to take away

• 28 letters, 28 sounds: the spelling is the transcription.
• Five pure vowels, with no glide and no schwa.
• c is /ts/, j is /j/, and the English "j" sound is ĝ.
• r is a tongue-tip trill or tap, always sounded.
• Six diphthongs (aj ej oj uj aŭ eŭ), each a single syllable.
• Stress falls on the second-to-last syllable, every time.