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Online resources - Esperanto beginner

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19 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>


Fasulye
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 Message 1 of 19
29 April 2011 at 8:30pm | IP Logged 
Inspired by a Skype conversation I had with Mae today I would like to create a thread with all kinds of online resources for beginners of Esperanto.

Unfortunately, I myself am not familiar with online-resources for Esperanto because I started learning Esperanto already in 1991. As well recommendations of grammars or textbooks for beginners would find a good place in this thread. I would invite especially Sprachprofi to make a contribution to this thread.But also some other Esperanto-learners, who have online-experience with this language.

Bonan sukseson!

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 29 April 2011 at 8:40pm

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Volte
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 Message 2 of 19
29 April 2011 at 8:45pm | IP Logged 
Lernu is fantastic. I went from passively understanding a bit of the language to actively being conversational via a few weeks of intensively using it.

I had previous exposure to Esperanto, but wasn't even a solid beginner actively beforehand.

It has simplified (and graded by difficulty) grammar explanations, including excerpts from PMEG, one of the best grammars of Esperanto. It has a graded short story, with audio, "Gerda malaperis". It has several other online courses which you can do at your own pace (entirely with the computer - no waiting for a human to reply), of varying quality. It also lets you test yourself.

It's of limited help in figuring out what you want to do after you become able to use the language - but it's perfectly adequate for becoming fairly good at Esperanto.

-----------------
Other notes:
- I don't like any offline Esperanto textbook that I've seen. The Assimil course is horribly bad; the Teach Yourself one doesn't appeal to me, but I've met people who like it. I haven't seen many others with an English base, though quite a few exist.

PMEG is available in full online; it can also be ordered as a physical book. It's purely in Esperanto.

Learn the correlatives and affixes, thoroughly. They go a long way, and are critical to understanding Esperanto and speaking it decently.

Sprachprofi teaches Esperanto online. I didn't learn it from her, but she did help me out with a number of questions when I was intensively using Lernu, and I did learn some Latin from her. For anyone who wants an actual teacher, I recommend her highly!

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Fasulye
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Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto
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 Message 3 of 19
29 April 2011 at 8:55pm | IP Logged 
Thank you Volte for this valuable contribution! You give a lot of useful tips which are based on your own Esperanto-learning experience. I myself was asked to give advice to a beginner of Esperanto, but my own textbooks are already old or they are based on the Dutch language which wouldn't be helpful in this case. Please keep such quality of advice coming in...

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 29 April 2011 at 8:59pm

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dmaddock1
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 Message 4 of 19
29 April 2011 at 10:53pm | IP Logged 
I've been studying Esperanto for about a year, but I didn't use much early beginner material from the web. I did use, and would highly recommend, Richardson's Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language. That book has three sections: one covering Esperanto history and culture, one on grammer, and the last is a fantastic graded reader. Like Volte, I followed that with "Gerda," which I found very easy by that point.

I have yet to see online course material better than Richardson's book. I did also find online the audio for Teach Yourself Esperanto and Jen Nia Mondo which I used for listening comprehension.

That said, here's some online materials which I found, and still find, really helpful as a beginner and in the "post-beginner" stage. I'm including "cultural" resources too since I've found these as much, or more, important than direct language study materials.

General Study
Baza Radikaro Angla lists 2500 EO word roots, roughly in order of frequency. I made an Anki deck from this which I can provide if you like.

Edukado.net has a bunch of lesson material which is searchable by difficulty. I also vote for Lernu. In particular, they have good audio recordings for beginners (Gerda and 5 stories from Vere aĆ­ Fantazie).

Tajpi makes typing EO easy

Literature
200+ Esperanto books by Inko in PDF format - a treasure trove of reading material including many important literary works as well as easy reading like La Eta Princo.

La Esperanta Gazetejo has many PDF magazines

If a beginner likes reading, the Concise Encyclopedia of Original Literature in Esperanto is a necessity. It's written in English and so is a top-notch intro to the language from a literary perspective. Absolutely the #1 reason I decided to learn EO.

Mondial is one of the only EO publishers that I've found with most of their catalogue for sale as ebooks through Google Books.

Music & Film
2 free music albums from the Esperanto band Persone (btw, the drummer is the author of PMEG...) Vinilkosmo has a ton more music to explore, including mp3 downloads. Two non-free downloads I would highly recommend are Persone's Sen and Martin & la talpoj's Pli ol nenio. Great music with esperanto lyrics.

There are some YouTube videos of Esperanto speakers (usually from Congresses, etc.) but not much. I'd recommend finding video of the movies Incubus and Angoroj for cultural reasons. Verda Filmejo can point you to subtitled movies.

Culture & Community
For whatever reason, many Esperantists use iPernity, a website for multimedia sharing and social networking. Here you can find a bunch of audio, video, pics, and documents about Esperanto culture, current and historical. For example, I found a recording of La Eta Princo there.

Podkastaro.org lists some available podcasts. Of which, Radio Verda is my personal favorite. Esperanta Retradio provides transcripts with the audio.

Libera Folio for news about Esperanto organizations and happenings.


My experience with Esperanto in the US is a lonely one. The clubs in my area are dead and I have yet to meet another Esperantist in person (though I know of one who lives a few hours away). So, these online resources have been crucial for me to feel like I'm connecting with a real community, if indirectly.

The language is so easy to learn that, in my opinion, what's needed the most are online resources for beginners that have already read one textbook. Then again, maybe my experience is atypical.

d.
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Mae
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 Message 5 of 19
30 April 2011 at 12:51am | IP Logged 
Thanks to Fasulye for starting this thread. I'd like to add two more links (one is a recommendation from Fasulye, the UEA).
- Deutsche Esperanto Jugend - they have some handouts with basic Esperanto vocabulary
- Universala Esperanto-Asocio - with links, informations and tipps
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Fasulye
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Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto
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 Message 6 of 19
30 April 2011 at 8:01am | IP Logged 
When typing in Esperanto in this forum or when writing e-mails in Esperanto you can write Esperanto with the x-method. You write an x for every Esperanto-akcento like for example "Mi ne scias, cxu mi povas acxeti ion hodiaux." (= I don't know, if I can buy something today.) That's what I do normally.

But it looks nicer, if you write real Esperanto-akcentoj. For this you can use an Esperanto-konvertilo which converts texts written by the x-method into Esperanto-akcentoj.

Esperanto konvertilo

Fasulye



Edited by Fasulye on 30 April 2011 at 6:16pm

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Michael K.
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 Message 7 of 19
30 April 2011 at 4:34pm | IP Logged 
Ivy Kellerman's Esperanto Grammar (it's from around 1910) from Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7787/7787-h/7787-h.htm

Esperanto in 20 lessons, from 1907, on Scribd (skip to page 8):

http://www.scribd.com/doc/53038522/Esperanto-in-twenty-lesso ns

Sorry for the old resources, but they're out of copyright, LOL.

Another one I have gone through on YouTube is La Pasporto al la Tuta Mondo, which is an 8 hour course about the Bonvolo family and their guest, Ruselo Sxafisto.

The first DVD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVyut5BV3kE

The channel is called Masoris, and there are several other videos, such as "Gerda Malaperis." The channel is by a Korean Esperantist.

I signed up for the 10 lesson correspondance course at

http://pacujo.net/esperanto/course/

and have found it to be a good course, although I am on lesson 6 right now and have been doing the course for 15 days. They also allow you to take "Gerda Malaperis" after the 10 lesson course.

A podcast, "Ni Parolu Esperanton" that my tutor from the above course recommended, so far only 4 podcasts:

http://matesperantisto.podomatic.com/


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Luai_lashire
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 Message 8 of 19
30 April 2011 at 6:00pm | IP Logged 
I used the internet almost exclusively when I learned Esperanto, the only book I used was Richardson's textbook
mentioned above by dmaddock1. I also found it excellent. I recommend checking your local library, as even
small ones will often have a book or two about eo.

I highly recommend that beginners use Lernu's "La Puzlo Esperanto" course when they are just starting out; it's a
great introduction to the affix system and also gets you making sentences right off the bat, which helps with
becoming conversational quickly. I also used Gerda Malaperis, and I downloaded the audio and listened to it on
my iPod over and over again.
Lernu also has a built-in dictionary that allows you to get a definition for any word on the site, which is fantastic
for those who are just starting to read.

I found a book online that I also thought would be useful to some, called "The Esperanto Teacher". Its main
feature is that it does not use any grammatical terms at all, such as "accusative" or even "adjective", but rather
describes what these concepts are in easy-to-understand language, which would be greatly useful to people who
know very little about technical language terms. You can find it here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=146 9816

I also second the recommendation of "Pasporto Al La Tuta Mondo", it was the first all-in-esperanto course that I
was able to understand and is a very relaxed and pleasant way to learn (if you don't mind the low production
value. ;)

Besides Incubus, which actually has a fair number of errors in it, I would recommend a documentary about the
Esperanto movement which is called "Esperanto- la Centjara" and can be found here:
http://filmoj.net/esperanto-la-centjara
This is made by real esperanto speakers, for esperanto speakers, and I really enjoyed it!


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