SPECIAL SOUNDS NEED SPECIAL LETTERS: If your equipment permits, on some webpages you might see the special Esperanto letters displayed correctly like this
Ĉ, Ĝ, Ĥ, Ĵ, Ŝ, Ŭ,
ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ
On many Esperanto webpages the special letters are shown in a substitute system like this
CX, GX, HX, JX, SX, UX,
cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux,
and on others are shown with a separate ^, or ', or "h" for all but "ux." If you learn to pronounce the special letters properly, you then might have fun trying to work out the meanings of some of the words. If your computer equipment permitted, you would see that the first five special letters are capped with a circumflex (^), and the special "ŭ" (ux) has a downward curving diacritical mark sometimes called a "breve" above it. But until recent years the Internet has had difficulty in displaying correct Esperanto.
Pronunciations for Anglo-Celtic speakers are: "cx" = ch as in church, "gx" = j as in jar, "hx" = kh as the last sound in Scots loch, "jx" = zh as the middle sound in azure, and "sx" = sh as in shop. The "ux" is pronounced "w" in some places, or a quick "oo", but mainly coalesced in diphthongs. The corresponding ordinary letters, i.e., those without the following "h" or the special accents, are pronounced as follows:
c = ts, g = g as in get, h as in hurry,
j as y in yellow, s as in sing, and u as in blue.
The diphthong "aux" is pronounced like the "ow" in "cow."
Esperantists have had to put up with these makeshifts until the main Browser companies updated their systems, and the manufacturers have still (Nov. 2000) not provided a universal system for keyboarding the letters straight onto Webpages.
Louis Zamenhof's own recommendation, to use an "h" after 5 of
the special letters and to use a plain "u" for special "ŭ"
when these letters can't be printed with the correct diacritical marks, is not as popular nowadays, and has problems. These days there are automatic translation systems on the WWW (or the TTT) that prefer the "x" or the "^" to show the special letters. Also, some people say that because "h" is a legitimate Esperanto letter with its own corresponding sound, in a sense it is not appropriate to use it to mark a missing accent mark. In addition, in compound words where the first element ends in "c" etc and the next element starts with "h", there would be a danger of mispronunciation and misunderstanding. (This problem is best avoided by inserting a hyphen, for example, "flug-haveno" = "airport", which if written as usual "flughaveno" might be mispronounced by learners as if the sound after "u" was
ĝ .) And, printing a plain "u" for a special "u" does lead to incorrect spellings, mispronunciations and the risk of difficulty in understanding in a few cases. (However, inserting a following "h" avoids that problem. Adding this "h" makes the style "Amplified Zamenhofan".)
The use of the circumflex ("^") off the keyboard results in words that look broken up, and of phrases that appear outlandish, and are difficult to read, such as "Ni s^ang^is niajn c^evalojn hierau^." (We changed our horses yesterday.) If the ^ is put in front of the letters, there is the extra disadvantage of spoiling automatic alphabetic sorting. Compare the readability, coherence, neatness and understandability of the same sentence using the "h" in the Amplified Zamenhofan system: "Ni shanghis niajn chevalojn hierauh" (adding an "h" to show a special "u") or the "X" or "ikso" system "Ni sxangxis niajn cxevalojn hieraux." The "X" system seems to be the most popular, and in spite of opponents who say it looks outlandish (forgetting that French has words like "aux"), it looks quite neat and is nearly as easy to read as the real Ni ŝanĝis niajn ĉevalojn hieraŭ. So far (Nov. 2000), the "X" seems to be the best for e-mails if the sender want every receiver to get a readable message (even if Unicode might be able to be used in the latest equipment.) (E-mails by the special multi-language LingoMAIL ™ did not work with Apple Macintosh computers up to November 2000, so should not be used for years until most old Apples are retired.)
Trying with Latin 3's special programmes and typeface sets to represent the special letters correctly on webpages can give VERY outlandish and difficult-looking results for people without the special downloaded typefaces. Web-surfers generally will see strange letters, a fraction, a number, and symbols -- Æ, Ø, ¦, &# 172;, Þ, Ý and æ, ø, ¶, ¼, þ, ý -- in among the ordinary letters.
To non-speakers, our potential recruits, if either the "x" or the "h" are used the words look neat and regular. Because "x" is not in the Esperanto alphabet, it is said that the the translating machines at present (Nov. 2000) can understand quicker if "x" is used to show the special letters than if "h" is used.
Whatever system you adopt, my plea is that it avoid anything that will make reading standard Esperanto magazines and books require more mental gymnastics than is necessary. For that reason I do not support the substitution of the "ux" with a "w," nor any of the proposed systems which entail using the letters Dr Zamenhof left out, "q," "w," "x," and "y" in various innovative ways.
OTHER PRONUNCIATIONS: The five vowels are heard in
"Pa let me go
too," and in "Are there three or two?"
Pronounce "ej," "aj" and "oj" to rhyme with "Hey, my boy!" -- Johano MASAMO
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English: Translations: We suggest that you copy the URL, then click
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