I began working on the beginner lessons on this site today and noticed that the recordings do not seem to have a rising interrogatory inflection when asking a question (the slight rising of pitch in the voice when you ask a question). Does Esperanto not have the interrogatory inflection?

deadgoon:I began working on the beginner lessons on this site today and noticed that the recordings do not seem to have a rising interrogatory inflection when asking a question (the slight rising of pitch in the voice when you ask a question). Does Esperanto not have the interrogatory inflection?

Esperanto does have this inflection. But some of our recordings lack the inflection of usual speech. I think it's mostly because the speakers in the recordings are trying to speak slowly, to help beginners understand - and it's hard to get the inflections of normal speech into slow speech, without sounding weird.

deadgoon:I began working on the beginner lessons on this site today and noticed that the recordings do not seem to have a rising interrogatory inflection when asking a question (the slight rising of pitch in the voice when you ask a question). Does Esperanto not have the interrogatory inflection?

No, Esperanto does not have this interrogatory inflection. Questions are indicated by the presence of the interrogatory particle, ĉu. However, many esperantists have native languages that do use a rising inflection as a means of distinguishing a question from a statement. They'll often follow that pattern in Esperanto out of habit. This is not wrong either, but it is not an indication of a question.

In Esperanto if you try to ask a question by using a rising inflection, but omit the ĉu, you'll actually be making a statement instead of a question.