Esperanto is a made up language spoken by millions of people, and today we're going to explore one aspect of how this language has naturally evolved over time. The letter H, with a hat. Who keeps stealing its hat? And why? First, let's talk about why it wears a hat. It was given a hat by Dr. Xaminholf, the creator of Esperanto. It's actually one of six Esperanto letters that wear a hat, although this one has a bow instead. In designing the language, Xaminholf wanted each sound to be represented by one letter. Well, the Latin alphabet has 26 letters, but he wanted a few more sounds than that, and moreover, some Latin letters were discarded, as they are typically recognized as making unique sounds. So he removed Q, W, X, and Y, but added six new letters. Ch-Jo-Jo-Jo-Jo-Jo-Jo-Jo-Wo. These are actually existing letters in disguise, but you would never know it because they're wearing hats. Some of these letters follow a predictable pattern. Ch-O sounds like a CH. Ch-O sounds like an SH. Ch-O sounds like a soft G, but not a G-H because English is weird. Who cares about English? So what's this about then? It's the same sound we pretend to make when saying Bach or Loch, although most of us can't be asked and just use a hard K instead, Bach, Loch. But haven't you noticed all the English words where CH is pronounced with a K, mechanical and chemistry to name a few? This is because had its own letter, let alone its own sound in Greek, whom we still use these words from, for stolen Greek words that get pawned off to Esperanto, that's where CH belongs. As a side note, why does H wear the hat? Why not the pants? The sound is often considered similar to CH. They're articulated the same way and in nearly the same place. Hmm, but why did the sound become CH in English? Well, CH is articulated in the same places CH and nearly the same way. This sounds relationship is clearly visible when looking at the international phonetic alphabet. And now for the real question, what's the deal with CH? It is a vanishing letter in Esperanto. From an arbitrary corpus of nearly 1.5 million letters, CH occurs 0.01% of the time. For comparison, the most frequent letter, A, has a frequency of 11.93%. Out of 5259 official words, the letter H is present in only 34 or 0.6%. And a number of Esperantists are trying to eradicate the letter H even there by replacing it with the letter K. For example, mechanica becomes mechanica, chemio becomes chemio, and chirrogo becomes chirrogo. And neither of those are easy to say. There are two words stand in their way. Choro and Ejo, the words for chorus and echo. These words pose a unique challenge because the words Choro and Ejo already exist. The former means heart. And before you think of replacing it with a bare H instead, Horo also exists, meaning hour. The other word is harder to translate as it's actually just a prefix turned noun, but essentially means commencement. Neither of these words are especially common, but their mere existence is an oft-sided justification for keeping H as a separate letter. Despite this, reformers know no bounds in their crusade. They won't let two measly words stand in their way. Instead, they've proposed alternative non-unionized replacements. Chorozo and Ejo. This kind of change is not unprecedented. Mylesparantists are resistant to changing that which already exists. New words are coined all the time, and plenty of words have synonyms and dual forms. Choro wouldn't be wrong, but authors moving forward might opt to write Chorozo instead. The letter Chor is on the run. But why do people hate it so much? I've checked its Twitter history and found nothing objectionable, so what gives? Some people just think it looks ugly. How does a lowercase H even wear a hat? Like this? This? This one's my favourite personally. But let's bring our attention to the sound it makes. The sound itself is not the problem. Although we barely have it in English, it's fairly common in Western Germanic, some Celtic, and all Slavic languages. The problem is that very few languages make minimal pairs between ch-ch-ch. That is to say few languages distinguish words only by these sounds, as does Esperanto with Choro and Horo. Some languages only have one or the other. For example, French and English, practically speaking, only have H. While Russian and Greek only have H. It's not so much that one has to learn a new sound. After all, you can probably sound a h, or something close enough, but the coexistence of these sounds prevents them from being allophones, or sounds that sound close enough. Without ch-ch, a Russian speaker could pronounce every h-ch with a-ch, and it's close enough. But one cannot make a habit of this without potentially waking up at 8-0 Choros. This crusade actually dates back to Xamonhoff's time, before the language's founding document was even ratified. Xamonhoff often publicly responded to inquiries about Esperanto and clarified his position on various matters. In 1902, he wrote to one bewildered reader, regarding the letter H. You are entirely correct. If I were to create the language now, having as much practical experience, I certainly would throw that letter out. But now I personally have no right to make any change in the language. Maybe some future academy can make changes. Therefore I cannot give you officially the permission to write cameo, etc. Because that would indicate that I regard myself as the owner of the language. But privately, I can tell you that I approve of your idea and would never protest your use of both forms, with Chor and with Chor. This future academy came into existence some years later, and remains the authority over Esperanto to this day. It routinely officialises both the Chor form and the Chor form of several words, having done so as recently as 1974. That said, the academy seems to prefer Chor where possible in its own material. Chor has faced an uphill battle, but it may not be disappearing at all. In fact, it might be gaining traction. A corpus of new text has this letter almost four times as often as a similar sized corpus of old texts, though that's not saying much. Some speakers wish to preserve this letter as a part of Esperanto culture. The famed Esperanto translation of Minecraft calls this never-dweller the chastor, an invented word that otherwise has no meaning and no etymology with any other language. Chor is also commonly used online for interjections and onomatopoeia, sometimes even for those that don't have this sound. This reads like chichh, even though that's not a customary laugh for many people who write this way. Others yet insist that Chor makes Esperanto more international and judiciously use it in loan words and proper names. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this slice of Esperanto history. If you'd like to prank your friends, send them this video and say it's for Halloween and make sure not to forget your hat. Tial, don't forget to subscribe to my channel and don't forget to like it. Chor, please tell me what I look like the most around the world. If you'd like to tell me that I have ideas to try and my own protest, if you use them in the word, I'll put them in the form of a dog and a dog.