Esperanto Orthography - Origin

Origin

The script is modeled after Western Slavic scripts such as the Czech or Sorbian alphabet. However, the use of circumflexes instead of carons for the letters ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ avoids the appearance of any particular Latin alphabet, and the non-Slavic bases of the letters ĝ and ĵ, rather than Slavic dž, ž, help preserve the printed appearance of Latinate and Germanic vocabulary such as ĝenerala "general" and ĵurnalo "journal". The letter v stands for either v or w of other languages. The letter ŭ of the diphthongs aŭ, eŭ appears to be from the Belarusian Łacinka alphabet, historically associated with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. (Today Łacinka is strikingly similar to the Esperanto alphabet, but in Zamenhof's day it was closer to Polish; the convergence came with orthographic reforms two decades after Zamenhof went public with Esperanto.)

The spelling of geographic names is sometimes divergent from English. This is especially remarked upon when English has the letters x, w, qu, or gu, as in Vaŝingtono "Washington", Meksiko "Mexico", or Gvatemalo "Guatemala". However, such spellings are normal to several languages of Central, Northern, and Eastern Europe. Compare the Esperanto forms with Serbo-Croatian Vašington, Meksiko, and Gvatemala. Likewise, cunamo, from Japanese tsunami, is similar to Czech and Latvian cunami.