Esperanto phonology
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The creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, did not specify phonemic-phonetic correspondences for his language. Instead, he simply described the orthography as "one letter, one sound". Literally interpreted, this is impossible: Every language has allophonic variation; and so there are disagreements, for example, as to whether voicing assimilation is allowed, expected, or forbidden in sequences like kz (found in ekzemple for example).
Zamenhof also failed to explicitly lay out Esperanto phonotactics, only saying that borrowings "need to conform to Esperanto orthography". Therefore spellings have been adopted that appear to violate his intentions, such as poŭpo, ŭato, jida, matĉo. However, many of these coinages have proven to be unstable, and have either fallen out of use or been replaced with pronunciations more in keeping with the original Esperanto vocabulary, such as pobo and vato for poŭpo and ŭato.
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[edit] Orthography and pronunciation
Zamenhof suggested using Italian as a model for Esperanto pronunciation.
The Esperanto alphabet is nearly phonemic and coincides closely to the International Phonetic Alphabet. The letters, along with their IPA and nearest English equivalents, are,
| Consonants | Vowels & diphthongs | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Letter | English | IPA | Letter | English | IPA | |
| b | b | [b] | a | ah | [a, ɑ] | |
| c | ts | [ts] | e | eh | [e, ɛ] | |
| ĉ | ch | [tʃ , tʂ] | i | ee | [i] | |
| d | d | [d] | o | oh | [o, ɔ] | |
| f | f | [f] | u | oo | [u] | |
| g | hard g (as in go) |
[g] | ||||
| ĝ | j | [dʒ, dʐ] | aj | bye | [ai̯, ɑi̯] | |
| h | h | [h] | aŭ | bough | [au̯, ɑu̯] | |
| ĥ | loch | [x] | ej | bay | [ei̯, ɛi̯] | |
| j | y | [j] | eŭ | * | [eu̯, ɛu̯] | |
| ĵ | zh | [ʒ, ʐ] | oj | boy | [oi̯, ɔi̯] | |
| k | k | [k] (but see Assimilation) |
uj | booey (one syllable) |
[ui̯, ʊi̯] | |
| l | l | [l] | * Something similar to eŭ is sometimes heard for "oh" in exaggerations of the Queen's English by American comedians such as Carol Burnett. |
|||
| m | m | [m] | ||||
| n | n | [n, ŋ] | ||||
| p | p | [p] | ||||
| r | r (rolled) | [ɾ, r] | ||||
| s | s | [s] | ŭ is a consonant in a few words like ŭa! (waa!) & a name for the letter, ŭo. |
|||
| ŝ | sh | [ʃ, ʂ] | ŭ | |||
| t | t | [t] | ||||
| v | v | [v, ʋ] | ||||
| z | z | [z] | ||||
This inventory is rather similar to that of Polish, but is especially close to Belarusian, which was historically important to the creator of Esperanto.
The main innovations, compared to Belarusian, are,
- the absence of palatalization in Esperanto, although this was present in Proto-Esperanto (nacjes, now nacioj "nations"; familje, now familio "family") and arguably survives marginally in the affectionate suffixes -njo and -ĉjo, and in the interjection tju!;
- the lack of a phonemic affricate /dz/, although again there are remnants in words such as edzo "a husband".
[In Belarusian, the letters ł, l represent /l, lʲ/ (phonetically [lˠ, lʲ]), and i, y represent /ji, i/ (phoneticaly [ji, ɨ]), so these are accounted for by the absence of palatalization.] It can also be argued that the Esperanto sequences kv, gv are phonemes, representing the phonemic /kʷ, gʷ/ of their Latinate and Germanic sources.
On the other hand, the distinctions between several Esperanto consonants carry very light functional loads, though they are not in complementary distribution and therefore not allophones. The practical effect of this is that people who do not control these distinctions are still able to communicate without difficulty. These minor distinctions are ĵ [ʒ] vs. ĝ [dʒ], found in aĵo "concrete thing" vs. aĝo "age"; k [k] vs. ĥ [x] vs. h [h], found in koro "heart" vs. ĥoro "chorus" vs. horo "hour", and in the prefix ek- (inchoative) vs. eĥo "echo"; and c [ts] vs. ĉ [tʃ], found in a few minimal pairs such as caro "tzar", ĉar "because"; ci "thou", ĉi (proximate particle used with deictics); celo "goal", ĉelo "cell"; -eco "-ness", eĉ "even"; etc.
The distinction between e and ej carries a light functional load, in the core vocabulary perhaps only distinctive before alveolar sonorants, such as kejlo "peg, spigot", kelo "cellar"; mejlo "mile", melo "badger"; Rejno "Rhine", reno "kidney". The recent borrowing gejo "gay, homosexual" could contrast with the ambisexual prefix ge- if used in compounds with a following consonant. Eŭ is also uncommon, and very seldom contrastive: eŭro "a Euro" vs ero "a bit, piece".
[edit] Stress and prosody
Within a word, stress is on the penultimate syllable, with each vowel defining a syllabic nucleus: familio [fa.mi.ˈli.o] "family". An exception is when the final -o of a noun is elided, usually for poetic reasons, as this does not affect the placement of the stress: famili’ [fa.mi.ˈli].
On the rare occasions that stress needed to be specified, as in explanatory material or with proper names, Zamenhof used an acute accent. The most common such proper name is Zamenhof's own: Zámenhof. If the stress falls on the last syllable, it is common for an apostrophe to be used, as in poetic elision: Oĝalan’.
There is no set rule for which other syllables might receive stress in a polysyllabic word, or which monosyllabic words are stressed in a clause. Morphology, semantic load, and rhythm all play a role. By default, Esperanto is trochaic; stress tends to hit alternate syllables: Ésperánto. However, derivation tends to leave such "secondary" stress unchanged, at least for many speakers: Ésperantísto or Espérantísto (or for some just Esperantísto) Similarly, compound words generally retain their original stress. They never stress an epenthetic vowel: vórto-provízo, not *vortó-provízo.
Within a clause, rhythm also plays a role. However, referential words (lexical words and pronouns) attract stress, while "connecting" words such as prepositions tend not to: dónu al mí or dónu al mi "give to me", not *dónu ál mi. In Ĉu vi vídas la húndon kiu kúras preter la dómo? "Do you see the dog that's running past the house?", the grammatical words do not take stress, not even two-syllable kiu "which" or preter "beyond". The verb esti "to be" behaves similarly, as can be seen by the occasional elision of the e in poetry or rapid speech: Mi ne ’stas ĉi tie! "I'm not here!"
Within poetry, of course, the meter determines stress: Hó, mia kór’, ne bátu máltrankvíle "Oh my heart, do not beat uneasily."
Emphasis and contrast may override normal stress. Pronouns frequently take stress because of this. In a simple question like Ĉu vi vídis? "Did you see?", the pronoun hardly needs to be said and is unstressed; compare Ne, dónu al mí "No, give me." Within a word, a prefix that wasn't heard correctly may be stressed upon repetition: Ne, ne tíen! Iru máldekstren, mi diris! "No, not over there! Go left, I said!" Since stress doesn't distinguish words in Esperanto, shifting it to an unexpected syllable calls attention to that syllable, but doesn't cause confusion as it might in English.
As in many languages, initialisms behave oddly. When grammatical, they may be unstressed: k.t.p. [kotopo] "et cetera"; when used as proper names, they tend to be idiosyncratic: UEA [ˈu.ˈe.ˈa], [ˈu.e.a], or [u.e.ˈa], but rarely *[u.ˈe.a]. This seems to be a way of indicating that the term is not a normal word. However, full acronyms tend to have regular stress: Tejo [ˈte.jo].
Lexical tone is not phonemic. Nor is clausal intonation, as question particles and changes in word order serve many of the functions that intonation performs in English.
[edit] Inventory
The consonantal inventory is as follows, with v counted as both a fricative and an approximant, parentheses around distinctions with low functional loads, and double parentheses around possible phonemes not represented by the orthography:
| labial | alveolar | post-alveolar | palatal | velar | glottal | ||
| tenuis plosives | p | t | ((tʲ)) | k | ((kv)) | ||
| voiced plosives | b | d | g | ((gv)) | |||
| tenuis affricates | (ʦ) | ʧ | ((ʧʲ)) | ||||
| voiced affricates | ((ʣ)) | ʤ | |||||
| voiceless fricatives | f | s | ʃ | (x) | |||
| voiced fricatives | v | z | (ʒ) | ||||
| nasal stops | m | n | ((nʲ)) | ||||
| approximants etc. | v | ɾ, l | j | h |
The vowels and diphthongs are:
| high-front | mid-front | low-central | mid-back | high-back |
| i | e | a | o | u |
| (ei̯) | ai̯ | oi̯ | ui̯ | |
| (eu̯) | au̯ | ((ou̯)) |
[edit] Phonotactics
A syllable in Esperanto is generally of the form (s/ŝ)(C)(C)V(C)(C). That is, it may have an onset, of up to three consonants; must have a nucleus of a single vowel or diphthong (except in onomatopoeic words such as zzz!), and may have a coda of zero to one (occasionally two) consonants.
Any consonant may occur initially, with the exception of j before i (though there is now one word that violates this restriction, jida "Yiddish" which contrasts with ida "of an offspring").
Any consonant except h may close a syllable, though coda ĝ and ĵ are rare in monomorphemes (for example, ĵ in the name of the conlang Loĵbano "Lojban"). Within a morpheme, there may be a maximum of four sequential consonants, as for example in instruas "teaches", dekstren "to the right". Long clusters generally include a sibilant such as s or one of the liquid l or r.
Geminate consonants generally only occur in polymorphemic words, such as mal-longa "short", ek-kuŝi "to flop down", mis-skribi "to mis-write"; and in proper names such as Ŝillero "Schiller", Finno "a Finn", Gallo "a Gaul" (now more commonly Gaŭlo), Buddo "Buddha" (now more commonly Budho); and a handful of unstable borrowings such as matĉo "a sports match".
Word-final consonants occur, though final voiced obstruents are avoided. For example, Latin ad "to" became Esperanto al, and Polish od "of, by, than" morphed into Esperanto ol "than". Sonorants and voiceless obstruents, on the other hand, are found in many of the numerals: cent "hundred", ok "eight", sep "seven", ses "six", kvin "five", kvar "four"; also dum "during", eĉ "even". Even the poetic elision of final -o is rarely seen if it would leave a final voiced obstruent. A very few words with final voiced obstruents do occur, such as sed "but", but in such cases there is no minimal-pair contrast with a voiceless counterpart (that is, there is no *set to cause confusion with sed). This is due to the fact that many people, including the Slavs and Germans, do not contrast voicing in final obstruents.
Syllabic consonants occur only as interjections and onomatopoeia: fr!, sss!, ŝŝ!, hm!.
All triconsonantal onsets begin with a sibilant, s or ŝ. Disregarding proper names such as Vladimiro, the following initial consonant clusters occur:
- Plosive + liquid — bl, br; pl, pr; dr; tr; gl, gr; kl, kr
- Voiceless fricative + liquid — fl, fr; sl; ŝl, ŝr
- Voiceless sibilant + voiceless plosive (+ liquid) — sc [sts], sp, spl, spr; st, str; sk, skl, skr; ŝp, ŝpr; ŝt, ŝtr
- Obstruent + nasal — gn, kn, sm, sn, ŝm, ŝn
- Obstruent + /v/ — gv, kv, sv, ŝv
And more marginally,
- Consonant + /j/ — (tj), ĉj, fj, vj, nj
The affectionate suffixes -ĉj- and -nj-, which retain remnants of the Slavic palatalized consonants, may very occasionally be used as words in their own right, as in mia ĉjanja popolo "my dear nation", in which case they may be word initial and not just syllable initial.
Although it does not occur initially, the sequence dz is pronounced as a cluster if not as an affricate, as in edzo [e.dzo]/[e.ʣo] "a husband" with an open first syllable [e], not as *[ed.zo].
In addition, initial pf- occurs in German-derived pfenigo "penny", kŝ- in Sanskrit kŝatrio "kshatriya", and several additional uncommon initial clusters occur in technical words of Greek origin, such as mn-, pn-, ks-, ps-, sf-, ft-, kt-, pt-, bd-, such as sfinktero "a sphincter" (which also has the coda nk). Quite a few more clusters turn up in sufficiently obscure words, such as tl in tlaspo "Thlaspi" (a genus of herb), and Aztec deities such as Tlaloko "Tlaloc". (The /l/ phonemes are presumably devoiced in these words.)
As this might suggest, greater phonotactic diversity and complexity is tolerated in learnèd than in quotidian words, almost as if "difficult" phonotactics were an iconic indication of "difficult" vocabulary. Diconsonantal codas, for example, generally only occur in technical terms, proper names, and in geographical and ethnic terms: konjunkcio "a conjunction", arkta "Arctic", istmo "isthmus".
However, there is a strong tendency for more basic terms to avoid such clusters, although cent "hundred", post "after", sankta "holy", and the prefix eks- "ex-" (which can be used as an interjection: Eks la reĝo! "Down with the king!") are exceptions. Even when coda clusters occur in the source languages, they are often eliminated in Esperanto. For instance, many European languages have words relating to "body" with a root of korps-. This root gave rise to two words in Esperanto, neither of which keep the full cluster: korpuso "a military corps" (retaining the original Latin u), and korpo "a biological body" (losing the s).
Many ordinary roots end in two or three consonants, such as cikl-o "a (bi)cycle", ŝultr-o "a shoulder", pingl-o "a needle", tranĉ-i "to cut". However, these roots do not normally entail coda clusters except when followed by another consonant in compounds, or with poetic elision of the final -o. Even then, only sequences with decreasing sonority are possible, so while poetic tranĉ’ occurs, *cikl’, *ŝultr’, and *pingl’ do not. (Note that the humorous jargon Esperant’ does not follow this restriction, as it elides the grammatical suffix of all nouns no matter how awkward the result.)
Within compounds, an epenthetic vowel is added to break up what would otherwise be unacceptable clusters of consonants. This vowel is most commonly the nominal affix -o, regardless of number or case, as in kant-o-birdo "a songbird" (the root kant- "to sing" is inherently a verb), but other part-of-speech endings may be used when -o- is judged to be grammatically inappropriate, as in mult-e-kosta "expensive".
There is a great deal of variation as to when an epenthetic vowel is used, since what is "acceptable" varies from speaker to speaker, and it also appears to depend on the frequency of the compound word, or perhaps the medium of expression (spoken vs. written). For example, the rather dry (and usually written) compound of vorto "word" and provizo "stock" for "vocabulary" turned up as vortprovizo, with an unbroken rtpr cluster, in 97% of Google hits. (Interestingly, in the accusative case the cluster only occurs 78% of the time.) A similar compound of parto "part" and preni "to take", for "to participate", could produce the same rtpr cluster. However, this compound is much more frequent (25 times as many hits on Google) and is part of people's basic speaking vocabulary. Here the epenthetic form partopreni is nearly universal; partpreni and its conjugations only occur 0.1% of the time.
[edit] Allophonic variation
With only five oral and no nasal or long vowels, Esperanto allows a fair amount of allophonic variation, though the distinction between /e/ and /ei̯/, and arguably /o/ and /ou̯/, is phonemic. Disregarding assimilation for the moment, the more noticeable allophony among the consonants is with /r/ and /v/. The /r/ may be pronounced as either an alveolar flap [ɾ] or an alveolar trill [r], in free variation but with the flap more common. The /v/ may be a labiodental fricative [v] or a labiodental approximant [ʋ], again in free variation, but with [v] considered normative. Alveolar consonants t, d, n, l are acceptably either apical (as in English) or laminal (as in French, generally but incorrectly called "dental"). Postalveolars ĉ, ĝ, ŝ, ĵ may be palato-alveolar (semi-palatalized) [t̠ʃ, d̠ʒ, ʃ, ʒ] as in English and French, or retroflex (non-palatalized) [t̠ʂ d̠ʐ ʂ ʐ] as in Polish, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese. H and ĥ may be voiced [ɦ, γ], especially between vowels. However, aspiration or incomplete voicing of consonants as in English or Mandarin is considered substandard, as are the English diphthongized "long" vowels [ij, ɛj, uw, ɔw].
[edit] Vowel length and quality
Vowels may be lengthened in open syllables or when stressed, and vowel quality often correlates with length, though the details vary with the language background of the speaker. (Zamenhof recommended pronouncing the vowels e and o as mid vowels at all times, but he himself pronounced them as open-mid vowels.) Adjacent stressed syllables are not allowed in compound words, and when stress disappears in such situations, it may leave behind a residue of vowel length.
Vowel length is sometimes presented as an argument for the phonemic status of the affricates, because vowels tend to be short before most consonant clusters (excepting plosives plus l or r, as in many European languages), but long before ĉ, ĝ, c, and dz.
Kalocsay & Waringhien recommend pronouncing unstressed vowels short, even in open syllables, with stressed e, o as short open-mid [ɛ, ɔ] in closed syllables and long close-mid [eˑ, oˑ] in open syllables. When syllables of compound words lose their stress, they recommend that the vowel should be long and open-mid: liber-tempo [libɛˑɾˈtɛmpo], or-ĉeno [ɔˑɾˈtʃeˑno].
[edit] Epenthesis
Epenthetic glottal stops in vowel sequences such as boao "boa" are non-phonemic, but allowed for the comfort of the speaker. They are especially common with sequences of identical vowels, such as heroo [heˈɾoˑʔo] "hero" and praavo [pɾaˈʔɑˑʋo] "great-grandfather". It is also very common to pronounce an epenthetic [j] between an /i/ and a following vowel (mia [ˈmiˑja], mielo [miˈjɛˑlo]), but this is avoided in careful enunciation.
[edit] Poetic elision
Vowel elision is allowed with the grammatical suffix -o of singular nominative nouns, and the a of the article la, though this rarely occurs outside of poetry: de l’ kor’ "from the heart".
Normally semivowels are restricted to offglides in diphthongs. However, poetic meter may force the reduction of unstressed /i/ and /u/ to semivowels before a stressed vowel: kormilionoj [kɔɾmiˈli̯oˑnɔi̯]; buduaro [buˈdu̯ɑˑɾo].
[edit] Assimilation
Zamenhof recognized two types of regressive assimilation in Esperanto:
- Place assimilation among nasals, and
- Voicing assimilation among obstruents.
However, he stated that "severely regular" speech would not have assimilation, and this has led to debate over whether it "should" occur.
An example of the first type is assimilation of n before a velar, as in banko [ˈbaŋko] "bank" or sango [ˈsaŋɡo] "blood". N may also palatalize before palatal /j/, as in panjo [ˈpɑˑɲjo] "mommy" and sinjoro [siˈɲjoˑɾo] "sir". However, although the desirability of these may be debated, the question almost never arises as to whether the m in emfazi should remain bilabial or should assimilate to labiodental f ([ɛɱˈfɑˑzi]), as this assimilation is nearly universal in human language. Indeed, where the orthography allows, we see that assimilation does occur. For example, original bonbono "bonbon" has over time become bombono even in dictionaries.
The debate on voicing assimilation is likewise dependent on speakers' language backgrounds. The question of assimilation is almost never an issue with words that maintain Latinate orthography, such as absolute [apsoˈluˑte] "absolutely" or obtuza [ɔpˈtuˑza] "obtuse", despite the fact that potentially contrastive voiceless equivalents such as apsido "apsis" and optiko "optics" occur. Instead, the debate centers around the non-Latinate orthographic sequence kz, frequently found in Latinate words like ekzemple "for example" and ekzisti "to exist". It is often claimed that kz is properly pronounced as written, with mixed voicing, [kz], despite the fact that Zamenhof recognized that the k may assimilate to the z for [ɛɡˈzɛmple, ɛɡˈzisti], as in Slavic, English, French, and many other languages. The two opinions are called ekzismo and egzismo in Esperanto. (Orthographic gz does not occur in Esperanto, except in the nonce word egzismo itself.) In practice, most Esperanto speakers assimilate both kz to [ɡz] and nk to [ŋk] when speaking fluently.
Voicing assimilation of affricates and fricatives before nasals, as in taĉmento "a detachment" and the suffix -ismo "ism", is both more noticeable and easier for most speakers to avoid, so [ˈizmo] for -ismo is less tolerated than [apsoˈluˑte] for absolute. Compound words such as okdek "eighty", longtempe "for a long time", and glavsonoro "the ringing of a sword" are likewise more likely to retain mixed voicing, though assimilation is not uncommon in rapid speech: [ˈɔɡdɛk, lɔˑŋkˈtɛmpe, ˈglaˑfsoˈnoˑɾo].
Similarly, mixed sibilant sequences, as in the polymorphemic disĵeti "to scatter", tend to assimilate, sometimes completely in rapid speech ([diʃˈʃeˑti]), though, if noticed, this would be considered wrong.
Like the generally ignored regressive devoicing in words such as absurda, progressive devoicing tends to go unnoticed within plosive-sonorant clusters, as in plua [ˈpl̥uˑa] ("additional"; contrasts with blua [ˈbluˑa] "blue") and knabo [ˈkn̥ɑˑbo] ("boy"; the kn- contrasts with gn-, as in gnomo [ˈɡnoˑmo] "gnome"). Partial to full devoicing of the sonorant is probably the norm for most speakers.
[edit] Loss of phonemic ĥ
The sound ĥ [x] was always somewhat marginal in Esperanto, and there has been a strong move to merge it into [k]. Dictionaries generally cross-reference ĥ and k, but the sequence rĥ (as in arĥitekturo "architecture") was replaced by rk (arkitekturo) so completely by the early 20th century that few dictionaries even list rĥ as an option. Other words, such as ĥemio "chemistry" and monaĥo "monk", still vary but are more commonly found with k (kemio, monako). In a few cases, such as with words of Russian origin, ĥ may instead be replaced by h. This merger has had only a few complications. Ĥoro "chorus" has been given the alternate form koruso, because both koro "heart" and horo "hour" were taken. The two words still almost universally seen with ĥ are eĥo "echo" and ĉeĥo "a Czech". Ek- (perfective aspect) and ĉeko "check" already exist, and Esperanto roots cannot end in h, although ekoo for eĥo is occasionally seen.
[edit] Proper names and borrowings
A common source of allophonic variation is borrowed words, especially proper names, when non-Esperantized remnants of the source-language orthography remain, or when novel sequences are created in order to avoid duplicating existing roots. For example, it is doubtful that many people fully pronounce the g in Vaŝingtono "Washington DC" as either [ɡ] or [k], or pronounce the h in Budho "Buddha". Such situations are unstable, and in many cases dictionaries recognize that certain spellings (and therefore pronunciations) are inadvisable. For example, the physical unit "Watt" was first borrowed as ŭato, to distinguish it from vato "cotton-wool", and this is the only form found in dictionaries in 1930. However, initial ŭ violates Esperanto phonotactics, and by 1970 there was an alternate spelling, vatto. This was also unsatisfactory, however, due to the geminate t, and by 2000 the effort had been given up, with vato now the advised spelling for both "Watt" and "cotton-wool". Some recent dictionaries, such as the Reta Vortaro, no longer even list initial ŭ in their index. Likewise, several dictionaries now list a newer spelling Vaŝintono for Washington.
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