Reddit reviews Complete Esperanto: Learn to read, write, speak and understand Esperanto (Teach Yourself)

i’m not sure about everyone, especially by march of next year, but i do think that there’s a good chance the community may increase to 3mil-4mil (from its current ~2mil) speakers by 2025-2035. the introduction of the internet is doing esperanto well. duolingo including esperanto and the introduction of that book that came out in february 2019 is a great push forward for the language. i do have faith that this language will continue to grow, if not to a global level, than to maybe an official status in europe.

Google Translate is notoriously unreliable -- using it to "check" your writing is going to be more trouble than help.

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Lernu.net is probably your best bet for organized, online learning.

Duolingo is a useful, game-ified supplement.

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There's some actual books worth checking out. Richardson's

Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language

is highly recommended.

Availability of the hard-copy can be inconsistent, but it's also available as a free PDF download from Esperanto-USA, as is an 12-lesson audio-course by William Auld.

A quite recent, but already well-recommend, book from Britain is supposed to be available in North America in early January (can be pre-ordered from Amazon, now):

Complete Esperanto: Learn to read, write, speak and understand Esperanto

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'Complete Esperanto' is an excellent, modern textbook:

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Esperanto-Learn-write-understand/dp/1473669189

If you want a free PDF of an older textbook, 'Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language' is available from Esperanto USA:

https://retbutiko.esperanto-usa.org/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1029_1033&products_id=19232

You'll see PDFs of Ivy Kellerman's textbook floating around, but it's from 1915, and not the best for learning modern Esperanto.

Duolingo is pretty bad at explaining things unfortunately. If you are on the desktop website, you can get a bit more information if you click the little light-bulb symbol that appears next to some of the lessons.

However I’d recommend doing another course alongside or instead of Duolingo. For example, you can try the course at Lernu.net or buy the book Complete Esperanto.

The -n ending marks the accusative. You add it to the thing that is being acted on by a verb. In English this is the thing that usually appears after the verb. For example “mi manĝas la pomon” (I am eating the apple). The apple is being eaten, ie, it is the thing being acted upon by the verb, so it needs the -n ending.

Duolingo is good but I still think you'd need additional resources to rank reasonably well on the CEFR scale. It's my understanding that Complete Esperanto is intended to get a student somewhere near B2 / upper intermediate.

There is a completely new Teach Yourself Esperanto book coming out soon (by Tim Own and Judith Meyer) https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Esperanto-Learn-write-understand/dp/1473669189

Laŭ la video, oni povas aĉeti ĝin ĉi-tie, ĉe Amazon. Ankaŭ, ŝajne, ĉe Esperanto-USA.

It's available online https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Esperanto-Learn-write-understand/dp/1473669189

I assume "no one speaks Esperanto" is hyperbole - there are thousands of fluent speakers, and over 2 million "active learners" on Duolingo. There are many languages in the world that don't have as active a speaker base.

"There is no Esperanto culture" is also an invalid criticism - there are thousands of Esperanto books as well as translations of popular books like The Hobbit or Alice in Wonderland. There is plenty of music and videos to be found on YouTube. There are several subreddits in Esperanto. You can learn it for free on lernu.net and duolingo, or go further with any of a number of courses available in book form or in person.

The valid criticism that people make is that "no one speaks it as a first language" and therefore there is nowhere in the world where you can "go" to use the language the same way you would French, Chinese, or Russian. Many people think it's not worth learning because of that. But here's the thing... THAT WAS THE POINT. Esperanto was designed to be the world's second language. It was never meant to supplant anyone's mother tongue. It was meant to be everyone's second language, so that no matter what your first language was, you could speak to anyone in the world. To me, that's pretty cool.

Unfortunately, because there was no native speaker base to spread its use, it never attained its goal. It would require a push from a large group of world governments to make that happen. And because of that, it probably will never become a world second language the way it was intended. For now, speakers of Esperanto will have to be content with Pasporta Servo

I would combine Duolingo with Lernu: https://lernu.net/en

You don't have to spend money, but if you want to, I've heard good things about the Teach Yourself Esperanto book (it's a pricey though): https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Esperanto-Learn-write-understand/dp/1473669189/ref=sr_1_1?crid=L17CYNEAZJ1E&keywords=teach+yourself+esperanto&qid=1573258720&sprefix=teach+yourself+esper%2Caps%2C213&sr=8-1

There's also the textbook by David Richardson, which is available as a very inexpensive ebook; the reader near the end of the book is valuable: https://www.amazon.com/Esperanto-Learning-Using-International-Language-ebook/dp/B06X96ZDZ1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3C83DAZAWX3V1&keywords=esperanto+richardson&qid=1573258790&sprefix=esperanto+rich%2Caps%2C217&sr=8-1#customerReviews

After you've made it to the end of a course and have a bit of a grasp of the language, you can do ekparolu, which is a program that matches learners up with fluent Esperanto speakers for 10 free skype sessions: https://edukado.net/ekparolu/prezento

If you live in or close to a city with an Esperanto club I would go to that too; they're usually pretty easy to find online with a bit of googling and it's important to start trying to speak the language out loud as soon as you can even if it's hard or you can only really say "saluton" and "ĝis".

Amuziĝu :)