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If I'm not mistaken the "capped" letters come from how Slavic languages are transliterated/written using the Latin alphabet, so why is the ĉ used instead of č when Slavic languages would use the former rather than the latter? Also they generally use ž instead of ĵ, so why is ĵ used?

Using Serbian romanization:

ч > č instead of ĉ

џ > dž instead of ĝ

х > h instead of ĥ (why not 'ȟ'?)

ж > ž instead of ĵ

ш > š instead of ŝ

ў > ŭ? instead of ŭ

using this system "eĥoŝanĝo ĉiuĵaŭde" would be: "eȟošandžo čiužaŭde"

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Why "hats" (circumflexes, ˆ) instead of carons (ˇ)?

If I'm not mistaken The "capped" letters come from how slavic languages are transliterated/written using the latin alphabet, so why is the ĉ used instead of č when slavic languages would use the former rather than the latter?

According to section "origin" of the article "Esperanto orthography" in the English wikipedia:

The script resembles Western Slavic Latin alphabets but uses circumflexes instead of carons for the letters ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, and ŝ. [...]

Zamenhof took advantage of the fact that typewriters for the French language (which, in his lifetime, was still a kind of international lingua franca for educated people) possess a dead key for the circumflex and umlaut/diaeresis diacritics: thus, anyone who could avail himself of a French typewriter could type ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ and their uppercase counterparts with no problem.

Why ĵ instead of (or )?

Also they generally use ž instead of ĵ, so why is ĵ used?

According to the same Wikipedia section:

Also, the non-Slavic bases of the letters ĝ and ĵ, rather than Slavic and ž, help preserve the printed appearance of Latinate and Germanic vocabulary such as ĝenerala "general" (adjective) and ĵurnalo "journal".

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  • I did read that before, but I guess I had forgotten. Ĝ is better for dʒ anyway, since dž would be 2 letters for that sound instead of one.
    – jastako
    Sep 20, 2020 at 0:02

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