How to Learn Esperanto
Esperanto is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn. This post can help you get started!
Why Learn Esperanto?
Many studies have shown that learning Esperanto increases the speed at which you can learn additional languages. If you want to learn a language like French or German, studying a bit of Esperanto first can help.
Esperanto is very easy to learn. Some people learn it in a few months, or even just a few weeks.
According to Wikipedia, there are between 10,000 and 2 million Esperanto speakers scattered around the world. This means that wherever you travel, it is likely that there are Esperanto speakers nearby. They can be found through resources like the Pasporta Servo and Lernu.
There are also many Esperanto courses and events around the world. I took a week-long intensive Esperanto course in Slovakia, and I plan to go to other Esperanto events in the future.
How to Learn Esperanto
I recommend trying some of the things below.
Learn the 16 Rules of Grammar
One of the first things that I did was to read through the 16 rules of Esperanto grammar. Esperanto is perfectly regular, so just reading these rules will provide the basics.
Here’s an example of how simple the grammar is:
- All nouns end with -o
- All adjectives end with -a
- All adverbs end with -e
- All verbs infinitives end with -i
You might start with a root word or two and then use prefixes and suffixes to change the meaning. Here are some examples of how the above suffixes change the root word “rapid”:
- Rapida — rapid (adjective)
- Rapide — rapidly (adverb)
- Rapidi — to hurry (verb)
- Rapido — speed (noun)
Check out the 16 rules of Esperanto grammar for a complete overview.
Set Up Your Computer to Type in Esperanto
Esperanto has a few letters that aren’t found in English like: ĉ, ĵ, Ĺ, Ĺť, ÄĄ,and Äť. There are ways to type these letters in Windows, Mac, and Linux.
It’s useful to set up your keyboard in the beginning so that you can start typing Esperanto words right away. If you don’t have a keyboard that can type in Esperanto, you also can use the “x” system where an x is placed after a letter to indicate that it has the circumflex accent. These are equivalent ways to write the same letters:
- gx = Äť
- jx = ĵ
- cx = ĉ
- sx = Ĺť
- hx = ÄĄ
- ux = Ĺ
It is okay to write Esperanto with either of these styles:
- Mi Ĺťatas Äťin.
- Mi sxatas gxin.
You can also set websites like Google, Facebook, and Reddit to display in Esperanto. If you want some websites to automatically display in Esperanto, you can change your browser settings to tell websites that it is your preferred language. This screenshot is from Firefox:
Memorize Vocabulary
A lot of Esperanto’s vocabulary comes from German, English, and Romance languages like French, Spanish, and Latin. If you speak English plus a little Spanish, French, Italian, or German, much of Esperanto’s vocabulary will already be familiar.
Anki flashcards are useful for vocabulary memorization. You can download free Esperanto flashcards here.
Learn the Prefixes and Suffixes
Esperanto words are built with prefixes and suffixes that are attached to root words. For example, the suffix -ej- takes a root word and makes it into a place. If the root word for “learn” is lern-, and -o indicates a noun, then the word for school is lern-ej-o — place of learning.
Read more about it here and download an Anki flashcard deck.
The Table of Correlatives
I think that it is useful to memorize the entire table of correlatives. I just printed the one at the bottom of this page, and quickly memorized it in a memory palace. Even now, when I hear words like kie, tiom, and ĉiam, I am sometimes transported back into my memory palace to verify the definitions.
Check Out Lernu.net and Online Resources
Lernu.net is full of resources for learning Esperanto. Our wiki also has a page of Esperanto resources. Also be sure to check out Esperantofre.com.
Daily Reading
One useful source of reading that I’ve discovered is Wikipedia in Esperanto. There are over 100,000 articles there.
Video and Audio
I’ve been listening to Esperanto podcasts. (Use a search engine to find current ones.) You can subscribe to the podcasts, and download them for off-line listening.
There are also many Esperanto videos on YouTube. Videos like this and this are good, because you can pause the video to read the subtitles. There are also some TED talks available in Esperanto.
Dictionaries and Translators
Google Translate now can translate Esperanto. Traduku is another translating tool. Lernu.net has an online dictionary.
Esperanto Events
There are Esperanto events all over the world. Use a search engine to find more.
Using Memory Techniques for Esperanto
Here are a few examples of using mnemonics to learn Esperanto vocabulary.
When I was learning vocabulary, I used a very loose version of the memory town method. I didn’t divide the memory towns into as precise sections as before, because I found that it slows me down enough to make it less fun. I basically used the vocabulary technique that Harry Lorayne mentions in his books, while also adding an element of location by placing different languages in separate towns.
Since Esperanto grammar is very simple, I only separated the mnemonic images into different parts of the town based on loose associations.
Example Images
For example, there are a lot of words like ankaĹ, ankoraĹ, antaĹ, preskaĹ, baldaĹ, anstataĹ, kvazaĹ, and almenaĹ. I put the mnemonic images for these words in a field together. Here are some of the images in that field:
AnkaŠ– too “On cow”. The sound “an” is Arnold Schwarzenegger in my phonetic system. He is on a cow and holding a swan (2 = too).
AnkoraŠ– still “On core”. An apple core is floating upright on a still puddle of water.
PreskaŠ– almost Pressing on the back of a cow to make almonds shoot out of its mouth. Almonds = almost.
BaldaŠ– soon Baldur with a football uniform (Sooners).
AlmenaŠ– At least Allemande is a type of dance in early European music. “Least” becomes leash – an early German dance with the dancers on leashes.
Most of the other words were put in the parking lot of a shopping center.
Further Reading
You might also be interested in these related pages:
