Esperanto phonology

Esperanto is a constructed international auxiliary language designed to have a simple phonology. The creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, described Esperanto pronunciation by comparing the sounds of Esperanto with the sounds of several major European languages.

With over a century of use, Esperanto has developed a phonological norm, including accepted details of phonetics, phonotactics, and intonation, so that it is now possible to speak of proper Esperanto pronunciation and of properly formed words independently of the languages originally used to describe it. This norm accepts only minor allophonic variation.

Inventory

The original Esperanto lexicon contains:

* 23 consonants (including ĥ , which has become rare, and 4 affricates)
* 11 vowels (5 simple vowels and 6 diphthongs).
A few additional sounds found in loan words, such as , are not stable.

Consonants

The uncommon affricate does not have a distinct letter in the orthography, but is written with the digraph , as in ('husband'). Not everyone agrees with Kalocsay & Waringhien that and are a near rhyme, differing only in voicing, or on the status of as a phoneme; Wennergren considers it to be a simple sequence of /d/ + /z/. The phoneme has been largely replaced with /k/ and is now found mostly in loanwords and a very few established words such as ('a Czech'; cf. 'a check'). The letter ''ŭ'' is sometimes used as a consonant in onomatopoeia and unassimilated foreign names, in addition to the second element in diphthongs, which some argue is consonantal /w/ rather than vocalic (see below).

Vowels

Esperanto has between 5 and 11 vowels, depending on analysis: 5 monophthongs and up to 6 diphthongs.

There are six historically stable diphthongs: , , , and , . However, some authors such as John C. Wells regard them as vowel–consonant sequences – , , , , , – while Wennergren regards , , , as vowel–consonant sequences and only , as diphthongs, there otherwise being no in Esperanto.

Origins

The Esperanto sound inventory and phonotactics are very close to those of Yiddish, Belarusian and Polish, which were personally important to Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. The primary difference is the absence of palatalization, although this was present in Proto-Esperanto (, now 'nations'; , now 'family') and arguably survives marginally in the affectionate suffixes and , and in the interjection Apart from this, the consonant inventory is identical to that of Eastern Yiddish. Minor differences from Belarusian are that ''g'' is pronounced as a stop, , rather than as a fricative, (in Belarusian, the stop pronunciation is found in recent loan words), and that Esperanto distinguishes and , a distinction that Yiddish makes but that Belarusian (and Polish) do not. As in Belarusian, Esperanto is found in syllable onsets and in syllable codas; however, unlike Belarusian, does not become if forced into coda position through compounding. According to Kalocsay & Waringhien, if Esperanto does appear before a voiceless consonant, it will devoice to , as in Yiddish. However, Zamenhof avoided such situations by adding an epenthetic vowel: ('washbasin'), not or . The Esperanto vowel inventory is essentially that of Belarusian. Zamenhof's Litvish dialect of Yiddish (that of Białystok) has an additional schwa and diphthong ''oŭ'' but no ''uj''.

Orthography and pronunciation

The Esperanto alphabet is nearly phonemic. The letters, along with the IPA and nearest English equivalent of their principal allophones, are:

Minimal pairs

Esperanto has many minimal pairs between the voiced and voiceless plosives, ''b d g'' and ''p t k''; for example, "pay" vs. "pack", "bar" vs. "pair", "briefcase" vs. "group of ten".

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'' vs. ''ĝ'' , contrasted in ('concrete thing') vs. ('age'); ''k'' vs. ''ĥ'' vs. ''h'' , contrasted in ('heart') vs. ('chorus') vs. ('hour'), and in the prefix (inchoative) vs. ('echo'); ''dz'' vs. ''z'' , not contrasted in basic vocabulary; and ''c'' vs. ''ĉ'' , found in a few minimal pairs such as ('tzar'), ('because'); ('thou'), (proximate particle used with deictics); ('goal'), ('cell'); ('-ness'), ('even'); etc.

Belarusian seems to have provided the model for Esperanto's diphthongs, as well as the complementary distribution of ''v'' (restricted to the onset of a syllable), and ''ŭ'' (occurring only as a vocalic offglide), although this was modified slightly, with Belarusian ''oŭ'' corresponding to Esperanto ''ov'' (as in ), and ''ŭ'' being restricted to the sequences in Esperanto. Although ''v'' and ''ŭ'' may both occur between vowels, as in ('ninth') and ('of naves'), the diphthongal distinction holds: vs. . (However, Zamenhof did allow initial ''ŭ'' in onomatopoeic words such as 'wah!'.) The semivowel ''j'' likewise does not occur after the vowel ''i'', but is also restricted from occurring before ''i'' in the same morpheme, whereas the Belarusian letter ''i'' represents . Later exceptions to these patterns, such as ('poop deck'), ('watt'), East Asian proper names beginning with , and ('Yiddish'), are marginal.

The distinction between ''e'' and ''ej'' carries a light functional load, in the core vocabulary perhaps only distinctive before alveolar sonorants, such as ('peg'), ('cellar'); ('mile'), ('badger'); ('Rhine'), ('kidney'). The recent borrowing ('homosexual') could contrast with the ambisexual prefix if used in compounds with a following consonant, and also creating possible confusion between ('homosexual couple') and ('heterosexual couple'), which are both pronounceable as . is also uncommon, and very seldom contrastive: ('a euro') vs. ('a bit').

Stress and prosody

Within a word, stress is on the syllable with the second-to-last vowel, such as the ''li'' in ('family'). An exception is when the final ''-o'' of a noun is elided, usually for poetic reasons, because this does not affect the placement of the stress: .

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: . If the stress falls on the last syllable, it is common for an apostrophe to be used, as in poetic elision: .

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: . However, derivation tends to leave such "secondary" stress unchanged, at least for many speakers: or (or for some just ) Similarly, compound words generally retain their original stress. They never stress an epenthetic vowel: thus , not .

Within a clause, rhythm also plays a role. However, referential words (lexical words and pronouns) attract stress, whereas "connecting" words such as prepositions tend not to: or ('give to me'), not . In ('Do you see the dog that's running past the house?'), the function words do not take stress, not even two-syllable ('which') or ('beyond'). The verb ('to be') behaves similarly, as can be seen by the occasional elision of the ''e'' in poetry or rapid speech: ('I'm not here!') Phonological words do not necessarily match orthographic words. Pronouns, prepositions, the article, and other monosyllabic function words are generally pronounced as a unit with the following word: ('I have'), ('the boy'), ('of the word'), ('at table'). Exceptions include 'and', which may be pronounced more distinctly when it has a larger scope than the following word or phrase.

Within poetry, of course, the meter determines stress: ('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 ('Did you see?'), the pronoun hardly needs to be said and is unstressed; compare and ('No, give ''me''). Within a word, a prefix that wasn't heard correctly may be stressed upon repetition: ('No, not over ''there!'' Go ''left'', I said!'). Because 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 unusually. When grammatical, they may be unstressed: ''k.t.p.'' ('et cetera'); when used as proper names, they tend to be idiosyncratic: or but rarely . This seems to be a way of indicating that the term is not a normal word. However, full acronyms tend to have regular stress: .

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.

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, ('Yiddish') which contrasts with "of an offspring").

Any consonant except ''h'' may close a syllable, though coda ''ĝ'' and ''ĵ'' are rare in monomorphemes (they contrast in 'age' vs. 'thing'). Within a morpheme, there may be a maximum of four sequential consonants, as for example in ('teaches'), ('to the right'). Long clusters generally include a sibilant such as ''s'' or one of the liquids ''l'' or ''r''.

Geminate consonants generally only occur in polymorphemic words, such as ('short'), ('to flop down'), ('to mis-write'); in ethnonyms such as ('a Finn'), ('a Gaul') (now more commonly ); in proper names such as ('Schiller'), ('Buddha', now more commonly ); and in a handful of unstable borrowings such as ('a sports match'). In compounds of lexical words, Zamenhof separated identical consonants with an epenthetic vowel, as in ('the evening of life'), never .

Word-final consonants occur, though final voiced obstruents are generally rejected. For example, Latin ('to') became Esperanto , and Polish ('than') morphed into Esperanto ('than'). Sonorants and voiceless obstruents, on the other hand, are found in many of the numerals: ('hundred'), ('eight'), ('seven'), ('six'), ('five'), ('four'); also ('during'), ('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 ('but') and ('next to'), but in such cases there is no minimal-pair contrast with a voiceless counterpart (that is, there is no or to cause confusion). This is because many people, including the Slavs and Germans, do not contrast voicing in final obstruents. For similar reasons, sequences of obstruents with mixed voicing are not found in Zamenhofian compounds, apart from numerals and grammatical forms, thus 'for a long time', not . (Note that is an exception to this rule, like in the Slavic languages. It is effectively ambiguous between fricative and approximant. The other exception is , which is commonly treated as .)

Syllabic consonants occur only as interjections and onomatopoeia: .

All triconsonantal onsets begin with a sibilant, ''s'' or ''ŝ''. Disregarding proper names, such as , the following initial consonant clusters occur:

*Stop + liquid – ''bl, br; pl, pr; dr; tr; gl, gr; kl, kr''
*Voiceless fricative + liquid – ''fl, fr; sl; ŝl, ŝr''
*Voiceless sibilant + voiceless stop (+ liquid) – ''sc'' , ''sp, spl, spr; st, str; sk, skl, skr; ŝp, ŝpr; ŝt, ŝtr''
*Obstruent + nasal – ''gn, kn, sm, sn, ŝm, ŝn''
*Obstruent + – ''gv, kv, sv, ŝv''

And more marginally,
:Consonant + – ''(tj), ĉj, fj, vj, nj''

Although it does not occur initially, the sequence is pronounced as an affricate, as in ('a husband') with an open first syllable not as .

In addition, initial occurs in German-derived ('penny'), in Sanskrit ('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 ('a sphincter' which also has the coda ). Quite a few more clusters turn up in sufficiently obscure words, such as in "Thlaspi" (a genus of herb), and Aztec deities such as ('Tlaloc'). (The 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: ('a conjunction'), ('Arctic'), ('isthmus').

However, there is a strong tendency for more basic terms to avoid coda clusters, although ('hundred'), ('after'), ('holy'), and the prefix ('ex-') (which can be used as an interjection: '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 . This root gave rise to two words in Esperanto, neither of which keep the full cluster: ('a military corps') (retaining the original Latin ''u''), and ('a biological body') (losing the ''s'').

Many ordinary roots end in two or three consonants, such as ('a bicycle'), ('a shoulder'), ('a needle'), ('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 although poetic occurs, *, *, and * do not. (Note that the humorous jargon does not follow this restriction, because 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 ('a songbird') (the root , '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 ('expensive'). There is a great deal of personal variation as to when an epenthetic vowel is used.

Allophonic variation

With only five oral and no nasal or long vowels, Esperanto allows a fair amount of allophonic variation, though the distinction between and , and arguably and , is phonemic. The may be a labiodental fricative or a labiodental approximant , again in free variation; or , especially in the sequences ''kv'' and ''gv'' ( and , like English "qu" and "gu"), but with 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) as in English and French, or ''retroflex'' (non-palatalized) as in Polish, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese. ''H'' and ''ĥ'' may be voiced , especially between vowels.

Rhotics

The consonant ''r'' can be realised in many ways, as it was defined differently in each language version of the Fundamento de Esperanto:

* In the French Fundamento, it is defined as ''r''. The French rhotic has a wide range of realizations: both the voiced uvular fricative or approximant and the voiceless uvular fricative , the uvular trill , the alveolar trill , and the alveolar tap . These are all recognized as the phoneme , but the trills and the tap are considered dialectal.
* In the English Fundamento, it is defined as in ''rare'', which is an alveolar approximant .
* In the German Fundamento, it is defined as ''r''. Most varieties of Standard German are spoken with a uvular rhotic, now usually a fricative or approximant , rather than . The alveolar pronunciation is used in some standard German varieties of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
* In the Russian and Polish Fundamento, it is defined as ''р (cyrillic)'', which is most commonly an alveolar trill .

The most common realization depends on the region and native language of the Esperanto speaker. For example, a very common realisation in English speaking countries is the alveolar flap . Worldwide, the most common realisation is probably the alveolar trill , which makes some people think it is the most desirable pronunciation. However, it is a common misconception to believe that the alveolar trill is the only correct form. The grammar reference Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko considers the velar form to be totally good if it is trilled, and considers the other realisations acceptable. In practice, the different forms are well understood and accepted by experienced Esperanto speakers.

Vowel length and quality

Vowel length is not phonemic in Esperanto. Vowels tend to be long in open stressed syllables and short otherwise. 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 stops plus ''l'' or ''r'', as in many European languages), but long before /ĉ/, /ĝ/, /c/, and /dz/, though again this varies by speaker, with some speakers pronouncing a short vowel before /ĝ/, /c/, /dz/ and a long vowel only before /ĉ/.

Vowel quality has never been an issue for /a/, /i/ and /u/, but has been much discussed for /e/ and /o/. Zamenhof recommended pronouncing the vowels /e/ and /o/ as mid at all times. Kalocsay and Waringhien gave more complicated recommendations. For example, they recommended pronouncing stressed /e/, /o/ as short open-mid in closed syllables and long close-mid in open syllables. However, this is widely considered unduly elaborate, and Zamenhof's recommendation of using mid qualities is considered the norm. For many speakers, however, the pronunciation of /e/ and /o/ reflects the details of their native language.

Epenthesis

Zamenhof noted that epenthetic glides may be inserted between dissimilar vowels, especially after high vowels as in for ('my'), for ('honey') and for ('further'). This is quite common, and there is no possibility of confusion, because /ij/ and /uŭ/ do not occur in Esperanto (though more general epenthesis could cause confusion between and , as mentioned above). However, Zamenhof stated that in "severely regular" speech such epenthesis would not occur.

Epenthetic glottal stops in vowel sequences such as ('boa') are non-phonemic detail, allowed for the comfort of the speaker. Glottal stop is especially common in sequences of identical vowels, such as ('hero'), and ('great-grandfather'). Other speakers, however, mark the hiatus by a change of intonation, such as by raising the pitch of the stressed vowel: .

As in many languages, fricatives may become affricates after a nasal, via an epenthetic stop. Thus, the neologism ('sense', as in the five senses) may be pronounced the same as the fundamental word ('sense, meaning'), and the older term for the former, , may be preferable.

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: ('from the heart').

Normally semivowels are restricted to offglides in diphthongs. However, poetic meter may force the reduction of unstressed and to semivowels before a stressed vowel: ; .

Assimilation

Zamenhof recognized place-assimilation of nasals before another consonant, such as ''n'' before a velar, as in ('bank') and ('blood'), or before palatal , as in ('mommy') and ('sir'). However, he stated that "severely regular" speech would not have such variation from his ideal of 'one letter, one sound'., §17 Nonetheless, although the desirability of such allophony may be debated, the question almost never arises as to whether the ''m'' in should remain bilabial or should assimilate to labiodental ''f'' (), because this assimilation is nearly universal in human language. Indeed, where the orthography allows (e.g. 'bonbon'), we see that assimilation can occur.

In addition, speakers of many languages (including Zamenhof's, though not always English) have regressive voicing assimilation, when two obstruents (consonants that occur in voiced-voiceless pairs) occur next to each other. Zamenhof did not mention this directly, but did indicate it indirectly, in that he didn't create compound words with adjacent obstruents that have mixed voicing. For example, by the phonotactics of both of Zamenhof's mother tongues, Yiddish and (Belo)Russian, ('rose-colored', 'pink') would be pronounced the same as ('dew-colored'), and so the preferred form for the former is .
Indeed, Kalocsay & Waringhien state that when voiced and voiceless consonants are adjacent, the assimilation of one of them is "inevitable". Thus one pronounces ('eighty') as , as if it were spelled ""; ('exist') as , as if it were spelled ""; ('for example') as , ('support') as , ('for a long time') as , ('ringing of a sword') as , etc.Miroslav Malovec, 1999
, §2.9.
/ref> Such assimilation likewise occurs in words that maintain Latinate orthography, such as ('absolutely'), pronounced , and ('obtuse'), pronounced , despite the superficially contrastive sequences in the words ('apsis') and ('optics'). Instead, the debate centers on the non-Latinate orthographic sequence ''kz'', frequently found in Latinate words like and above. It is sometimes claimed that ''kz'' is properly pronounced exactly as written, with mixed voicing, , despite the fact that assimilation to occurs in Russian, English (including the words 'example' and 'exist'), Polish (where it is even spelled ), French and many other languages. These two positions are called and in Esperanto. In practice, most Esperanto speakers assimilate ''kz'' to and pronounce ''nk'' as when speaking fluently.

:

In compound lexical words, Zamenhof himself inserted an epenthetic vowel between obstruents with different voicing, as in above, never , and , never as with some later writers; mixed voicing only occurred with grammatical words, for example with compound numbers and with prepositions used as prefixes, as in and above. ''V'' is never found before any consonant in Zamenhof's writing, because that would force it to contrast with ''ŭ''.

Similarly, mixed sibilant sequences, as in the polymorphemic ('to scatter'), tend to assimilate in rapid speech, sometimes completely ().

Like the generally ignored regressive devoicing in words such as , progressive devoicing tends to go unnoticed within obstruent–sonorant clusters, as in ('additional'; contrasts with 'blue') and ('boy'; the ''kn-'' contrasts with ''gn-'', as in 'gnome'). Partial to full devoicing of the sonorant is probably the norm for most speakers.

Voicing assimilation of affricates and fricatives before nasals, as in ('a detachment') and the suffix ('-ism'), is both more noticeable and easier for most speakers to avoid, so for is less tolerated than for .

Loss of phonemic ''ĥ''

The sound of , , was always somewhat marginal in Esperanto, and there has been a strong move to merge it into , starting with suggestions from Zamenhof himself. Dictionaries generally cross-reference and , but the sequence (as in 'architecture') was replaced by () so completely by the early 20th century that few dictionaries even list as an option. The central/eastern European form for 'Chinese', , has been completely replaced with the western European form, , a unique exception to the general pattern, perhaps because the word ('cinematography') already existed. Other words, such as ('chemistry') and ('monk'), still vary but are more commonly found with (). In a few cases, such as with words of Russian origin, may instead be replaced by . This merger has had only a few complications. Zamenhof gave ('chorus') the alternative form , because both ('heart') and ('hour') were taken. The two words still almost universally seen with are ('echo') and ('a Czech'). (perfective aspect) and ('check') already exist, though for is occasionally seen.

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 ('Washington') as either or , or pronounce the in ('Buddha') at all. 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 , to distinguish it from ('cotton-wool'), and this is the only form found in dictionaries in 1930. However, initial violates Esperanto phonotactics, and by 1970 there was an alternative spelling, . This was also unsatisfactory, however, because of the geminate , and by 2000 the effort had been given up, with now the advised spelling for both 'watt' and 'cotton-wool'. Some recent dictionaries no longer even list initial in their index.For instance, the ''Reta Vortaro'' didn't list for year

until it added an entry for 'wow!' in 201

/ref> Likewise, several dictionaries now list the spellings for 'Washington' and for 'Buddha'.

Violations

Before Esperanto phonotactics became fixed, Coined word, foreign words were adopted with spellings that violated the apparent intentions of Zamenhof and the norms that would develop later, such as ('poop deck'), ('watt'), and (' sports match'). 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 developing norms, such as for , for , and for . On the other hand, ('Yiddish') was also sometimes criticized on phonotactical grounds, but was used by Zamenhof after its introduction in the ''Plena Vortaro'' as a replacement for ''novjuda'' and ''judgermana'' and is well established.

See also

* Esperanto orthography

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Esperanto Phonology
Phonologies by language
Phonology