Judith's language learning blog

I thought I’d share some of my favourite resources for Esperanto. I will divide this into information for the might-be-interested, study materials for the definitely-interested and cultural resources for those who have actually learned at least some Esperanto.

To get a taste of Esperanto & the culture

Get answers to all your questions about Esperanto at Esperanto.info – and feel free to send me any questions if they aren’t answered there. Also read Volte’s account of her Immersion in Esperanto-land.

A quick introduction to some parts of Esperanto can be found at Wikibooks: Quick and Dirty Guide to Esperanto. Not very serious, but surprisingly good at teaching the key grammar concepts of Esperanto is the page How to Talk Dirty in Esperanto (not for minors). I also sometimes do a 1-hour introductory lecture (next: at the Expolingua Berlin) which empowers the audience to play with the language themselves.

To Study Esperanto

In terms of materials for studying Esperanto, Lernu wins any competition hands-down of course. Not just do they offer 12 free high-quality multimedia courses online, they also have a library of exercises, grammar explanations, vocabulary collections and of course texts. For intermediate students and those who want to study Esperanto the way Tolstoy did, I highly recommend reading texts and forum posts at Lernu with the help of the in-built pop-up dictionary that will allow you understand any item of vocabulary immediately. That way, no text will be too high level for you. I am successfully using this technique for Chinese as well, with the Wenlin software.

For the finer points of grammar, those not covered by the introductions available at Lernu, I’m happy to say that the Esperanto world’s definite grammar reference is available online completely for free: Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko.

To determine which words to teach, that is which words are the most useful to beginning students of Esperanto, I often refer to the list of Easy Esperanto roots according to the magazine Kontakto. The bold entries are the most basic, the non-bold ones still come up fairly often. I find this so useful that I even created an Anki vocabulary deck featuring at least one entry for every bold word root, along with the English translation, related words and sample sentences. The words are sorted into categories such as “Basics” or “Feelings”, so that you can disable the categories you don’t need right now. To get this word list and start studying, open Anki, navigate to File > Download > Shared Deck and look for the “Esperanto 101″ deck. For my students I also created a version that features myself pronouncing every entry, so that they could improve their Esperanto pronunciation and test their listening comprehension. If anybody else wants that deck with recordings, send $10 to sprachprofi@gmx.net and I will forward it right away.

To Use Esperanto

Once you’re at a certain level in a language, the most sure-fire way to improve is by using it. No more excuses, no more simplified stuff – just jump into the cold water already!

I always recommend attending an international Esperanto meeting, because there are few things as beneficial as immersing yourself in an environment where everybody speaks Esperanto and doesn’t share another common language. Even for beginners it can be very worthwhile, as most meetings offer Esperanto classes at the same time, so you could attend classes in the morning and then spend the afternoon, evening and night having fun with Esperanto speakers from around the world. After seven days or so in Esperantio, many report that they are dreaming in Esperanto. Eventoj.hu lists many Esperanto events.

Now is also the time to dive into Esperanto literature. My favourite work, especially for beginners, is Fajron Sentas Mi Interne (skip the antaŭparolo on that page, it contains too many spoilers). Lernu also uses the novel Gerda Malaperis as a course for intermediate students, and they offer a lot of Brother Grimm fairy tales in Esperanto with annotations. Once you’re ready for the real thing, have a look at Don Harlow’s index of Esperanto literature online, or just get some books from the libroservo at the next Esperanto event. Mail-ordering from Esperanto-USA (for North Americans) or the Universal Esperanto League (for everybody) is also a possibility. If you’re interested in current events, you could also start by reading news in Esperanto, news in Esperanto about the Esperanto movement or news analysis in Esperanto.

And don’t forget to enjoy Esperanto music! You can start to get an overview on this page (though some well-known bands didn’t want to submit samples there) or just look on Youtube, there is tons of it. In terms of internet radio, there are also several Esperanto radio stations where you can practise listening comprehension and discover new songs.

If you want to watch some movies in Esperanto, there isn’t much of a selection yet because no city could support an Esperanto cinema. However, Esperantists are busily subtitling movies now and at Esperanto events you will typically get to see a different subtitled movie every night. For home use, you can also download subtitles for a number of movies from the Verda Filmejo or DivxTitles. There’s also another site with other movies, but I forgot the link. Anyway this is a great chance to watch foreign movies that may not have been translated into English. Short films with Esperanto subtitles (or even Esperanto voices) can be found at Dotsub.com.

I wish you success in your studies and use of Esperanto.
Hope to see you in Esperantio sometime!