Ĵ

Ĵ or ĵ (J circumflex) is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiced postalveolar fricative (either palato-alveolar or retroflex), and is equivalent to the voiced postalveolar fricative, IPA2|ʒ, or the voiced retroflex fricative, IPA| [ʐ] .

While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic. "Ĵ" is based on the French letter "j" to better preserve the shape of borrowings from that language (such as "ĵurnalo" from "journal") than Slavic "ž" would.

ee also

* Ĉ
* Ĝ
* Ĥ
* Ŝ
* Ŭ