Esperanto Typing Speed Test
Free Online Esperanto Keyboard – The Six Accented Letters on Real Keys
Welcome to the Esperanto keyboard online (Esperanto klavaro). All six accented letters have keys of their own here, so you can write Esperanto properly from any computer, tablet or phone with nothing to install and no workaround. Click the keys on screen, or type on your physical keyboard.
How this layout is arranged. The circumflex letters ĉ, ĝ and ĥ follow P on the top row, ŝ and ŭ follow L on the home row, and ĵ takes the spare key at the far left of the number row, beside the 1. Shift gives the capitals Ĉ, Ĝ, Ĥ, Ĵ, Ŝ and Ŭ — worth having, since Ĉu opens most Esperanto questions — and the digits are untouched.
Esperanto begins in 1887, when L. L. Zamenhof, an ophthalmologist from Białystok in the Russian Empire, published the first textbook — Unua Libro — in Warsaw under the pen name Doktoro Esperanto, 'one who hopes'. The pen name stuck to the language. He had grown up in a town divided by language and wanted a neutral second tongue.
The alphabet has 28 letters and is strictly phonemic: one letter, one sound, with stress always on the second-to-last syllable. It drops q, w, x and y, and adds five letters with a circumflex — ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ — plus ŭ with a breve. Esperantists call the circumflex a ĉapelo — a 'hat'.
Those six letters have been the practical obstacle to writing Esperanto for over a century. Typewriters lacked them, early encodings left them out, and they are missing from every default national keyboard. Two workarounds grew up in response, and you still meet both online.
The h-system is Zamenhof's own, set out in the Fundamento de Esperanto in 1905: write ch, gh, hh, jh and sh for ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ and ŝ, and plain u for ŭ. It has a known flaw — flughaveno, 'airport', can be misread as containing ĝ. The x-system arrived with computers and avoids that: cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux. Because x is not a letter of Esperanto, the substitution is unambiguous and software can convert it mechanically.
Here you need neither. The characters here are genuine Unicode, so your text is correct the moment you write it and stays correct when pasted. Speaker estimates vary widely, from roughly a hundred thousand fluent speakers to a couple of million with some knowledge, plus perhaps a thousand denaskuloj. Everything stays in your browser — nothing is sent to a server or logged.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I type ĉ on this keyboard?
Click the ĉ key on the top row, immediately to the right of P, where a US keyboard puts the opening square bracket; ĝ and ĥ sit beside it. For the capital Ĉ — which you need constantly, since Ĉu opens most questions — press Shift first or switch Caps on. The character produced is real Unicode.
Where are ŝ, ŭ and ĵ?
The ŝ and ŭ keys sit on the home row immediately right of L, where a US keyboard puts the semicolon and apostrophe. The sixth letter, ĵ, takes the spare key at the far left of the number row, just before the 1. Shift gives Ŝ, Ŭ and Ĵ, and the digits are not displaced at all.
What is the x-system, and do I need it here?
It is a convention for writing Esperanto on keyboards that lack the accents: cx, gx, hx, jx, sx and ux stand in for ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ. Because x is not a letter of Esperanto, the substitution is unambiguous and converters can undo it automatically. You do not need it here — the real letters have keys.
What is the h-system?
Zamenhof's original workaround, published in the Fundamento de Esperanto in 1905: ch, gh, hh, jh and sh replace the circumflex letters, and ŭ is written as plain u. It is older but ambiguous — flughaveno, 'airport', reads as though it contained ĝ. That flaw is why the x-system largely replaced it in computer-era writing.
Will my Esperanto text paste correctly into other apps?
Yes. Every character here is standard Unicode, so ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ paste unchanged into Word, Google Docs, Gmail, Slack, forums, forms and databases. No special Esperanto font is needed at the other end. If a system shows boxes, that is a missing font on that machine, not a problem with your text.
How does this differ from an official Esperanto layout?
There is no national standard, because Esperanto has no country to standardise it. Desktop users typically install a custom layout, a dead-key arrangement or an AltGr remapping, and no two agree. This keyboard sidesteps the question by giving each of the six letters a key of its own on an otherwise ordinary QWERTY.
Who created Esperanto, and when?
L. L. Zamenhof, an ophthalmologist from Białystok, published the first textbook in Warsaw in 1887 under the pen name Doktoro Esperanto. He designed the language as a politically neutral second language with regular grammar and no exceptions, intended to be learnable in a fraction of the time a national language demands.
How many letters does the Esperanto alphabet have?
Twenty-eight. It omits q, w, x and y from the Latin set and adds ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ. Spelling is completely regular: each letter always represents the same sound, and stress always falls on the second-to-last syllable, so any written word can be pronounced on sight.
Is this Esperanto keyboard free, and does it work on phones?
It is entirely free, with no account, no installation and no limit on how much you type. The layout is responsive and works on iPhone, iPad and Android as well as on desktop browsers. Advertising is what keeps it free, and a typing speed test is available if you want to practise.
Keep Practicing
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