Esperanto Beginners' Resources

Want to learn Esperanto? Great! This list contains all the essentials to start your journey.

But hold on… What is Esperanto, really? If you’re asking, this TED talk summarizes a whole lot - its history, ease of use, how it sounds, and more. Time to jump in!

Online courses

Lernu! Is a tried-and-true Esperanto course which gives you a solid grounding in the language. The website also has a media library!

Duolingo offers a great basic course in Esperanto with a free app, so you can learn on-the-go! Keep in mind that the grammar notes are only on the web version.

Kurso de Esperanto is a downloadable 12-lesson course. It’s a little more on the traditional side, but contains a range of exercises and features.

Learn.Esperanto.Com teaches the most used 500 words with various reading and grammar exercises. It’s also optimized for smartphones!

Vocabulary

Memrise is a great site for crunching lots of words. It offers a range of lists (including a Duolingo one!) and is quick to get into.

BaBaDum is a colourful way to learn new words! The site has several game modes, so give each one a try.

Drops is an app which offers vocabulary in chill 5-minute daily sessions.

Clozemaster is the ultimate fill-in-the-blank game to learn words in context, with sentences sourced from Tatoeba. This one might be more useful for upper-level beginners as it is good to have a little grammatical knowledge.

Articles and Stories

Gerda Malaperis! Is an oft-cited detective story for beginners. The complexity of the text builds in each chapter, and it even comes with exercises.

UEA Facila - Short articles on a variety of topics written to use predominantly easy/common Esperanto words. The texts include explanations of any new/difficult words. Also includes audio recordings of the articles being read out. Updated regularly.

Audio resources

Podcasts and radio shows

Radio 3ZZZ in Esperanto - Weekly radio show in Esperanto on independent Australian broadcast radio station 3ZZZ. "The programme contains news about the Esperanto movement, interviews and information about society, medicine, technology, psychology, nature and Esperanto literature."

Pola Retradio - Radio show in Esperanto from Poland.

Varsovia Vento Podkasto - Podcast from the Esperanto club in Warsaw, Poland.

Kernpunkto - Podcast covering the themes of technology, culture, and society.

UEA Facila - see above

Radio Verda (Archive) - Independent podcast from Vancouver, Canada, produced between 1998 and 2013. Short, magazine-style episodes on a broad range of topics. Highly recommended.

Audiobooks

BookBox has a variety of Esperanto audiobooks with text and images. While they’re aimed at children, they’re also a great resource for adult learners.

Exploring Esperanto has longer, tougher audiobooks without the text for anyone wanting a pure listening challenge.

Videos

Learning videos

Mazi en Gondolando is a film aimed at kids but is still a pretty good resource for grown-ups. It features entertaining characters and good vocabulary reinforcement.

Exploring Esperanto is a series that covers some key elements of Esperanto such as the difference between tio, tiu, and ke, certain word endings, and even themed vocabulary.

Evildea’s Perfect Dark and World of Warcraft let’s plays are Esperanto lessons!

Music

This Spotify playlist has all the Esperanto songs on Spotify! For lighter listening, this playlist contains the 50 Esperanto songs most listened to on Spotify.

This Youtube playlist contains over 700 songs!

KantarViki has lyrics for many Esperanto songs.

Websites / Forums

Where you can practice Esperanto

Telegramo has links to a variety of Telegram chats, the main one of which is Esperantujo.

This Discord server is a great place to chat, as well as practise speaking.

Duolingo Esperanto Learners is a Facebook group where you can ask questions and get your writing corrected.

On Reddit, /r/Esperanto is the main subreddit, which regularly receives content. Alternatively, /r/LearnEsperanto is a great place to ask questions to the community.

Apps

See the Online Courses and Vocabulary sections, above, for language learning apps.

Amikumu is an app that lets you find nearby Esperanto speakers (and speakers of other languages). You can also make short posts, and strike up a conversation.

Online Dictionaries

Lernu’s Vortaro is small but has good quality translations.

Glosbe is larger, but some translations can be dubious - you can click a translation to check its back-translation for more details.