Esperanto viva

    Accented Esperanto letters.



     Ĉ ĉ Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Ĵ ĵ Ŭ ŭ

    The Esperanto alphabet has 28 letters, including six accented letters.

    The Esperanto accented letters are as follows:
    		^C ^c - pronounced as in English ch in church.
    ^G ^g - pronounced as in English g in George.
    ^H ^h - pronounced as in English ch in Scottish loch.
    ^J ^j - pronounced as in English s in pleasure.
    ^S ^s - pronounced as in English sh in shipshape.
    ^U ^u - pronounced as in English w in cow.

    The whole Esperanto alphabet is available in the character set ISO 8859-3, also known as Latin-3, which is used in many Worldwide Web pages.

    There are several conventions in use where Latin-3 is not available. The letters with circumflexes may be written as:
    		Circumflex first: ^C ^c ^G ^g ^H ^h ^J ^j ^S ^s
    		Circumflex last: Ĉ ĉ Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Ĵ ĵ Ŝ ŝ
    		x-convention: Cx cx Gx gx Hx hx Jx jx Sx sx
    		h-convention: Ch ch Gh gh Hh hh Jh jh Sh sh


    The remaining accented letter may be written as:
    		^U ^u; Ŭ ŭ; Ŭ ŭ; W w; Ux ux; Vx vx

    The recommendation by the originator of the language, Dr Zamenhof, was ch, u, etc., but this is now not so popular, and is awkward for automatic text processing, since a word such as chashundo [hunting dog] would be converted into ^ca^sundo [no meaning] rather than as ^cashundo.

    The most popular convention is cx, ux, etc. This could occasionally give problems with automatic text processing where foreign words, or names, are used. For instance Chevaux would be converted to Cheva^u. Alphabetic sorting invariably works, but one may occasionally come across contrived examples such as kaszono [till area] and kasxzono [hiding area] where the sorting order would be wrong.

    The convention of ^c, ^u derives from use of dead keys on manual typewriters adapted to Esperanto, but this has the disadvantage that Search / Find options on some software will not recognise the "^", and alphabetic sorting by ASCII does not work.

    Use of ĉ, ŭ is similar to common usage in other languages ( e.g. German u") and also follows the natural order in handwriting. Again, the find option on some software will not recognise the "^". Alphabetic sorting by ASCII code works well.

    Use of Latin-3 looks good in the Worldwide Web, but on some systems at least, selection lists and buttons will show the system font rather than the Latin-3 font that the browser is configured to. Also, since ASCII codes are used, it is difficult to handle in a text editor, and ASCII sorting will not work. The search facility on the browser may give the problem that the character displayed may be in the system font rather than the Latin-3 font. Special characters are not normally used in e-mail, and newsgroups.

    Published by Viva Languages. (c) IDF 1996-2002