Learn Esperanto from English

A source-aware first course

Esperanto is an international auxiliary language published by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. Its canonical 1905 Fundamento establishes the 16 rules, while a living international community and the Akademio de Esperanto maintain usage.¹² This guide separates those documentary facts from its own learner-facing explanations.

Start by reading rather than guessing from English spelling: Esperanto uses a regular Latin orthography and stresses the penultimate syllable. The six marked letters are ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ.¹

Saluton. Mi estas lernanto. — Hello. I am a learner.

In Esperanto, nouns end in -o, adjectives in -a, and adverbs in -e. Verbs do not agree with person. The attested examples below are retained verbatim from the research dossier; the surrounding explanation is in English so the guide does not introduce uncited target-language sentences.¹

Plural -j and accusative -n can combine. Esperanto’s productive word-building is a central learning strategy; the research dossier directly attests the derivation komputi + -ilo → komputilo (‘computer’).¹

Past -is, future -os, conditional -us, imperative -u, and infinitive -i keep the same form for every subject. Learn each ending in short, meaningful sentences before adding more affixes.¹

Ĉiuj homoj estas denaske liberaj kaj egalaj laŭ digno kaj rajtoj. — All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. This is the opening of the Esperanto UDHR, reproduced in the research dossier as an attested text.³

At B1, use flexible word order cautiously: the accusative enables emphasis, but ordinary SVO is usually clearest. Read community writing alongside the Fundamento so invented forms do not outrun attested usage.¹

Compare roots, affixes, compounds, and context. Treat -um- words as lexical items rather than assuming a productive meaning. This level is for revising a paragraph for precision, not merely adding rare vocabulary.¹

Use current community material, check Academy guidance for contested forms, and distinguish long-standing convention from newer usage. Speaker totals vary substantially by method, so cite a source and date rather than repeating one number as settled fact.¹²

Practice reader and next steps

The research dossier contains a short attested connected text, but not rights-cleared 1,200-character readers for every CEFR band. Rather than present model-generated material as sourced reading, this first release links learners to the canonical sources below; licensed, levelled readers should be added only with a source and rights review.

• Fundamento de Esperanto
• Universala Esperanto-Asocio
• Akademio de Esperanto