Esperanto topics

This article is part of the Esperanto series

Language

Esperanto | Grammar | Letters | Phonology | Orthography | Vocabulary

History

History | Zamenhof | Proto-Esperanto | "Unua Libro" | Declaration of Boulogne | "Fundamento" | Prague Manifesto

Culture and media

Culture | Esperantists | Esperantujo | Film | Flag | La Espero | Libraries | Literature | Music | Native speakers | Pop culture references | Publications | Zamenhof Day

Organization and services

Amikeca Reto | Esperanto Academy | Kurso de Esperanto | Encyclopedia | Pasporta Servo | Pen pal service | Plouézec Meetings | TEJO | UEA | World Congress

Criticism

Esperantido | Propedeutic value | Reformed | Riism | Vs. Ido | Vs. Interlingua

Related topics

Auxiliary language | Constructed language | Ido | Interlingua | Novial | Volapük Image File history File links Verda Stelo en pravajn proporciojn. ... As a recently constructed language, Esperantos history is short and relatively well-known. ... Abstract Esperanto is a constructed auxiliary language with an agglutinative morphology, no grammatical gender, and simple verbal and nominal inflections. ... Sm Esperanto is written in a Latin alphabet of twenty-eight letters, upper and lower case. ... The word base of Esperanto was originally defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. ... The constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto was developed in the 1870s and 80s by L. L. Zamenhof, and first published in 1887. ... L. L. Zamenhof Dr. Ludovic Lazarus (Ludwik Lejzer) Zamenhof (December 15, 1859–April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist, philologist, and the initiator of Esperanto, the most widely spoken planned language to date. ... Proto-Esperanto (or pra-Esperanto in the language itself) is the modern term for any of the stages in the evolution of L. L. Zamenhofs language project, prior to the publication of his Unua Libro in 1887. ... The Unua Libro (First Book) was the first publication to describe the international language, Esperanto (then called Lingvo Internacia, inter-national language). It was first published in Russian on July 26, 1887, and later editions were published in Russian, 1888, Hebrew, 1889. ... The Declaration of Boulogne (Bulonja Deklaracio) was a document written by L. L. Zamenhof and endorsed by the attendees of the first world congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France in 1905. ... The Fundamento de Esperanto (Basis of Esperanto) is a book by L. L. Zamenhof, published in the spring of 1905. ... The Prague Manifesto (or Manifesto de Prago) is a set of seven widely-shared principles of the Esperanto movement. ... The language Esperanto is often used to access an international culture. ... Esperantujo, also Esperantio, is a term used by speakers of the planned international language Esperanto to refer to the sphere of activity taking place in that language. ... // Feature films There are two feature films known to have been shot exclusively in the constructed language Esperanto. ... The Esperanto flag (or verda stelo, literally green star) is composed of a green background with a white square in the upper lefthand corner, which in turn contains a green star. ... La Espero (the hope) is a poem written by L. L. Zamenhof (1859-1917), the initiator of the Esperanto language. ... The following Esperanto libraries and collections of works in the Esperanto language are worthy of note: The Montagu Butler Library of Esperanto materials, maintained by the British Esperanto Association, whose collection of 30,000 items is often quoted. ... Since Esperanto is the largest planned language, there are over 25,000 books in Esperanto and the largest Esperanto book service at the World Esperanto Association sells over 4,000 books. ... Music in a variety of styles is written, recorded, and performed in Esperanto, a planned language used for international communication. ... Native Esperanto speakers (in Esperanto denaskuloj) come to be in families in which Esperanto (and usually other languages) is spoken. ... The constructed language Esperanto has been used in a number of films and novels. ... December 15 (Zamenhof Day, Zamenhofa Festo) is the birthday of L. L. Zamenhof, the initiator of Esperanto. ... Amikeca Reto (Friendship Network) is a directory of people around the world who do not necessarily want to host other Esperanto speakers, but want to work together and exchange ideas with others around the world. ... The Academy of Esperanto is, according to its website, an independent language institute whose task is to conserve and protect the fundamental principles of the language Esperanto and control its evolution. ... Kurso de Esperanto is a free language course software with 12 units for the constructed language Esperanto. ... The Encyclopedia of Esperanto is an encyclopedia about the Esperanto Movement. ... The Pasporta Servo (Passport Service) is a publication in Esperanto. ... The Esperanto Pen Pal Service is an online service to help speakers of the Esperanto language find Esperanto speaking pen pals around the world. ... The Breton village of Plouézec has hosted an International Meeting annually since 1997. ... TEJO is the Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo, or World Esperanto Youth Organization. ... The World Esperanto Association (in Esperanto UEA: Universala Esperanto-Asocio) is the largest international organization of Esperanto speakers, with members in 119 countries (as of 2000) and in official relations with the United Nations and UNESCO. In addition to individual members, 95 national Esperanto organizations are affiliated to UEA. Its... The World Congress of Esperanto (in Esperanto: Universala Kongreso de Esperanto) has the longest tradition among international Esperanto conventions, with an almost unbroken run of nearly a hundred years. ... There is a continuing debate on whether Esperanto is an appropriate solution for an international auxiliary language. ... Esperantido is the term used within the Esperanto and constructed language communities to describe a language project based on or inspired by Esperanto. ... Interesting experiments have been carried out on so-called propedeutic Esperanto, i. ... Reformed Esperanto was a reformed version of Esperanto created in 1894. ... Riism (Riismo in Esperanto) is a modification of Esperanto to simplify it, to make it symmetric, and to incorporate non-sexist language and gender-neutral pronouns into it. ... This article attemts to highlight the main differences between Esperanto and Ido, two constructed languages have a related past but have since parted ways. ... This article attemts to highlight the main differences between Esperanto and Interlingua, two planned languages which have taken radically different approaches to the problem of providing an International auxiliary language. ... An international auxiliary language (sometimes abbreviated as IAL or auxlang) is a language used (or to be used in the future) for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language. ... An artificial or constructed language (known colloquially as a conlang among aficionados), is a language whose phonology, grammar and vocabulary are specifically devised by an individual or small group, rather than having naturally evolved as part of a culture as with natural languages. ... Ido is a constructed language, arguably the second-most used International Auxiliary Language in the world. ... This article describes the international auxiliary language created by the IALA. For other usages of the term interlingua, see Interlingua (disambiguation). ... Novial [nov-, new + IAL, International Auxiliary Language] is a constructed language devised by Otto Jespersen, a Danish linguist who had previously been involved in the Ido movement. ... Volapük - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...

Wikimedia

Portal | Vikipedio | Vikivortaro | Vikicitaro | Vikifonto | Vikilibroj | Vikikomunejo | Vikispecoj

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. It is also unclear whether the script is completely phonemic, since v and ŭ appear to have been purposefully designed as allophones. The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... Unicode is an international standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ... As a recently constructed language, Esperantos history is short and relatively well-known. ... L. L. Zamenhof Dr. Ludovic Lazarus (Ludwik Lejzer) Zamenhof (December 15, 1859–April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist, philologist, and the initiator of Esperanto, the most widely spoken planned language to date. ... Sm Esperanto is written in a Latin alphabet of twenty-eight letters, upper and lower case. ... Assimilation is a regular sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. ...

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. Phonotactics (in Greek phone = voice and tactic = course) is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. ...

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, The International Phonetic Alphabet. ...

This inventory is rather similar to that of Polish, but is especially close to Belarusian, which was historically important to the creator of Esperanto. Carol Creighton Burnett (born April 26, 1933) was one of the most successful female comedians on American television, thanks largely to her variety show that ran on CBS from 1967 through 1978. ...

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. Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ... Proto-Esperanto (or pra-Esperanto in the language itself) is the modern term for any of the stages in the evolution of L. L. Zamenhofs language project, prior to the publication of his Unua Libro in 1887. ...

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 [d͡ʒ], 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 [t͡s] vs. ĉ [t͡ʃ], 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. For similarly practical reasons, there is no distinction between [v] and [w] in Esperanto, with v representing either. In linguistics and especially phonology, functional load refers to the importance of certain features in making distinctions in a language. ... Complementary distribution in linguistics refers to the relationship between two elements where one element can be found only in a particular environment and the other element can be found only in the opposite environment. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ...

Belarusian seems to have also 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 bovlo), and ŭ being restricted to the sequences aŭ, eŭ in Esperanto. While v and ŭ may both occur between vowels, as in naŭa "ninth" and nava "of naves", the syllabic distinction holds: [nau̯.a] vs. [na.va]. (However, Zamenhof did allow initial ŭ in onomatopoeic words such as ŭa "wah!".) The semivowel j likewise does not occur after the vowel i, but is also restricted from occurring before i, whereas the Belarusian letter i represents /ji/. Later exceptions to these patterns, such as poŭpo "poop deck", ŭato "Watt", East Asian proper names beginning with Ŭ, and jida "Yiddish", are marginal. In phonetics and phonology, a syllable onset is the part of a syllable that precedes the syllable nucleus. ...

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".

Stress, pitch and intonation

Stress is on the penultimate syllable, with each vowel defining a syllabic nucleus: familio [fa.mi.'li.o] "family". The only 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.'li].

On the rare occasions that stress needed to be specified, as in explanatory material or proper names, Zamenhof used an acute accent: Esperánto.

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. Similarly, compound words generally retain their original stress, especially if trochaic rhythm would stress an epenthetic vowel: usually vórto-provízo, not vortó-provízo. Within a clause, rhythm also plays a role. However, referential words attract stress, while "connecting" words such as prepositions tend not to: dónu al mí "give to me", not *dónu ál mi. A trochee is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. ...

Lexical tone is not phonemic. Nor is clausal intonation, as question particles and changes in word order serve many of the functions that intonation perfoms in English.

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:

The vowels and diphthongs are:

Phonotactics

A syllable in Esperanto is generally of the form (s/ŝ)(C₁)(C₂)V(C₃). That is, it may have an onset, of up to three consonants; must have a nucleus of a single vowel or diphthong (except in onomatopoeia), 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 violate this restriction, jida "Yiddish" vs. 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".

Geminate consonants generally only occur in polymorphemic words, such as mal-longa "short", ek-kuŝi "to flop down", mis-skribi "to mis-write"; and 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 "(sports) match".

Word-final consonants occur, though final voiced obstruents are dispreferred. For example, Latin ad (to) provided Esperanto al, and Polish od (of, by, than) provided Esperanto ol (than); whereas sonorants and voiceless obstruents 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 (i.e., no *set). 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: 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, ŝn, ŝm
• 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 generally pronounced as a cluster or perhaps an affricate, as in edzo [e.dzo]/[e.ʣo] "a husband".

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. The Sanskrit language (Skt. ... According to the code of Manu, a Kshatriya is a member of the military or reigning order, one of four varna within the Vedic caste system. ... The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th century. ...

As this might suggest, greater phonotactic diversity and complexity is tolerated in learnéd 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 an interjection: eks! "down with them!") are exceptions. Even when coda clusters occur in the source languages, they are often eliminated in Esperanto. For instance, many European languages have words pertaining 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 do not normally entail coda clusters except when followed by another consonant in compounds, or with poetic elision of a 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.) A database query syntax error has occurred. ... The word base of Esperanto was originally defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. ...

Within compounds, an epenthetic vowel is added to break up unacceptable clusters, though what is "acceptable" varies from speaker to speaker, and also depends strongly on the language medium. Although the compound vortprovizo ("vocabulary"), with an rtpr cluster, is more common in writing, many use the epenthetic form vortoprovizo in speech.

This epenthetic vowel is most commonly the nominal affix -o-, regardless of number or case, as in kant-o-birdo "a songbird", but other part-of-speech endings may be used when -o- is judged to be grammatically inappropriate, as in mult-e-kosta "expensive".

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], 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 may be voiced [ɦ], 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]. The alveolar tap/flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages (such as Russian, Spanish, Armenian, and Polish). ... Free variation in linguistics is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers. ... An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue (i. ... A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the flattened end of the tongue. ... Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ...

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. A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... The open-mid vowels make a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. ...

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 elements lose their stress, they recommend that the vowel should be long and open-mid: liber-tempo [libɛˑɾˈtɛmpo], or-ĉeno [ɔˑɾˈtʃeˑno]. A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ...

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. In poetry and phonetics, epenthesis (Greek epi, on × en, in + thesis, putting) is the insertion of a phoneme or syllable into a word, usually to facilitate pronunciation. ...

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].

Assimilation

Zamenhof recognized two types of regressive assimilation in Esperanto: Assimilation is a regular sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. ...

• 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. A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... In phonetics, an obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing the airway. ...

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, Spanish, 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. A sibilant is a type of fricative, made by speeding up air through a narrow channel and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth. ...

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. A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a member of a class of speech sounds that are continuants produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. ...

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 odd nonce sequences are created in order to avoid homonymy with existing roots. For example, it is doubtful that many people fully pronounce the g (as either [ɡ] or [k]) in Vaŝingtono "Washington DC", or 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 the spelling Vaŝintono for Washington.