Learn Esperanto from EnglishA 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
| Attested Esperanto | English | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| mi kantas | I sing | one present form |
| vi kantas | you sing | same verb form |
| ili kantas | they sing | same verb form |
| Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton? | Do you speak Esperanto? | attested question form |
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.