Learn Esperanto

Esperanto · a free course from absolute beginner to C2 · one lesson a day

Esperanto is the one language on this site you can expect to get genuinely good at in months rather than years, and the reason is that there is almost nothing to memorise beyond the words. Nouns end in -o, adjectives in -a, adverbs in -e, verbs take one ending per tense for every person alike. There are no irregular verbs, because there is no mechanism by which a verb could be irregular. Many people learn it first precisely for that: it is a short, complete experience of being fluent in something.

What is hard about Esperanto, and what this course does about it

The difficulties are few and specific. The accusative -n marks the object and has to become automatic, because word order will not do that work for you. The affixes are so productive that a learner under-uses them and speaks a clumsy calque of English instead — mal- alone reverses any adjective you know. And the hatted letters ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ ŭ are each one sound, which the course teaches as a lesson rather than a footnote, since they are also what you will have to type.

What the course covers

The syllabus is 364 numbered steps, and the first 319 of them have a lesson written by hand behind them — the explanation, the examples and the questions, not a template filled in. 32 of those steps are the grammar core: everything you need before the course turns to recombining it, which is the work that carries you from intermediate to C2.

The first 14 grammar points, in order

Straight from the course's own syllabus. Each gets its own lesson, and comes back in the reading and listening of later ones.

1. Greetings and introducing yourself: saluton, dankon, and saying your name
2. One letter, one sound: the hatted letters ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ ŭ, and where the stress falls
3. Nouns end in -o
4. La: the one and only article — and why there is no word for "a"
5. Adjectives end in -a and always match their noun
6. The verb esti and the present tense -as
7. The plural -j: nouns and adjectives change together
8. The personal pronouns mi, vi, li, ŝi, ĝi, ni, ili
9. The accusative -n: marking the object of a sentence
10. Asking questions: ĉu for yes/no, and the ki- words kio, kiu, kie
11. The past tense -is and the future -os
12. Saying no: ne, and the neni- words nenio and neniu
13. Possession: mia, via, lia, ŝia, nia, ilia
14. Adverbs end in -e

How one lesson works

Around 20–30 minutes at the fullest setting. Three lengths to choose from, and a shorter one spreads each grammar point over more lessons rather than taking the support away.

1. Review first. Every card that is due today comes back before anything new starts — all of them, with no cap, because a cap on reviews is a cap on what you remember.
2. New words. A handful of new words, dealt straight down the frequency list from wherever you got to, each with its recording.
3. The grammar. One point, explained in writing with worked examples and tables, before the questions that test it.
4. Reading. A passage in Esperanto in three parts, written from words you have already been taught, with comprehension questions.
5. Listening. The same again for the ear, in three parts.
6. Writing. From lesson 7, one task where you produce Esperanto of your own and get it back marked.

The words, and the order they come in

The course's vocabulary is a frequency list 2,000 words long, and the deck deals it in rank order from word one — so the words you meet first are the ones standing between you and an ordinary sentence. You can read the top of that list without signing up: the most common Esperanto words.

The course's words and phrases are recorded in a Esperanto voice — 3,427 clips, counted on the server — and the listening section plays them as connected speech rather than as a word list.

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