Customer Reviews

Esperanto Learning and Using the International Language

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'd normally not want to simply add another "Oh this is a great book" to the list of reviews that is already here, but honestly Richardson deserves the praise.

While the book largely tries to be three things at once it is successful to a good degree. The first part of the book is a good overview of the "language problem" and Esperanto's solution to is. It's also a good (but increasingly dated) overview of Esperanto culture and resources.

The second part of the book is a reasonable 10-lesson section on Esperanto itself. it does a good job at this for its size by immediately integrating the reading of dialog at the end of every lesson.

Finally, the most unique part of the book is its last part: a small Esperanto reading anthology that allows you to immediately try your new found skill.

If you're interested in Esperanto in any capacity (save hard linguistics, perhaps) this book is your first stop. Get it.

This is my favorite beginning Esperanto book. The vocabulary choices are good, with more difficult words being introduced in a logical manner (not all at once!) The excercises are at a good gradient - not too hard -- and the words a new Esperantist would need are introduced early on.

Within just a few days I was able to correspond with Esperanto speakers from all over the world.

I highly recommend the language and this book!

This book is in many ways the lineal descendant of the once popular "Esperanto: The World Interlanguage", to which a younger David Richardson himself made some minor contributions. I've never been particularly happy with the system used in both books, breaking the work down into expository section, lessons, reader and appendices. Each of these deserves a book of its own. The problem is always what weight to give each section vis a vis the others; and every reader will have his or her preferred balance.

Having said this, I have to add that Richardson did an excellent job of implementing the system in this book, better than the one in its predecessor. For one thing, he omitted the purely topical (and so ephemeral) material, such as the earlier work's long list of currently popular books and magazines in Esperanto, and UEA delegate categories.

The four chapters of explanation ("Communications and the Language Barrier") are well-written, and still of great interest, though they were written in the 1980s and so do not address the changes in the world over the past two decades; I don't find any mention of the internet, for instance. Perhaps for a fourth edition Richardson or some designated person will add a fifth chapter to bring the reader up to date.

The hundred-page ten-lesson Esperanto course will teach you everything you need to know about Esperanto to actually start using the language (actually, you can start using it after the first one or two lessons). The ten-lesson system unfortunately requires that even in a language with an excellent word-building system such as Esperanto there will be relatively long lists of basic vocabulary to memorize, but Richardson offsets this to some degree with well-thought-out drills and exercises.

For me, the real meat of the book is in the 130-page reading section. This isn't just a collection of reading material, but devotes almost as much space to annotations and explanations, which to some extent makes it an extension and polishing of the ten-lesson course.

The whole thing is rounded off by a bibliography, which also suffers (slightly) by being somewhat dated, and a fairly complete Esperanto-English vocabulary. Since there is no English-Esperanto vocabulary, the purchaser might also want to get a copy of an appropriate dictionary. For the neophyte, I'd recommend the inexpensive two-way EAB MiniDictionary; the more ambitious student may want a copy of the Comprehensive English-Esperanto Dictionary.

All in all, a good book to acquire if you intend to learn Esperanto and pursue the language to whatever degree.

If you've already started studying Esperanto, you probably have a textbook like "Teach Yourself Esperanto" and a dictionary like "Teach Yourself Esperanto Dictionary" by J. C. Wells. But, if you're new to Esperanto, and just wanting to learn more about it and perhaps get started on grammar and vocabulary, then you can't beat Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language.

If not available through Amazon, it's always easy to get this book from ELNA, the national Esperanto organization.

If you are curious about Esperanto or if you want to introduce someone to it, this is the single best all-in-one volume. Its four parts(history of the 'language problem', short course, readings, short dictionary) provide everything you need to get started (and more--honestly, the language is so easy). If you then need more material, there are many thousands more books and compact discs in existence, though Amazon.eo has yet to appear.

I purchased this book after I was already familiar with the basics of Esperanto, so I used the language lessons themselves as a review, rather than a primary means of learning the language from scratch. What I enjoyed most about this book was its history of the Esperanto language and movement (written in English, in the first section of the book), and the large number of reading exercises on diverse topics in the last section. The reading exercises are very helpful if you've advanced to a level where you find the basic stuff to be a little to easy and you're ready for more of a challenge.

It's really four-and-a-half stars. Since Teach Yourself Esperanto went out of print, this is almost certainly the best print-based Esp-o course for Anglophones.

My only gripes:
First, it needs an English-Esperanto glossary to complement its excellent Esperanto-English glossary.

Second, despite the third edition being published in 2004, this is book is essentially twenty-five years old. Its history of Esperanto has no information of anything happening since 1981 (despite the renaissance that the Internet has given the Esperanto movement), and the glossary has no computer/Web/electronic terms. The only difference I could discern between it and the second edition was a one-paragraph biographical note about the author.

This book is divided into four parts. First is an extended essay on the language and the movement, past, present and future--good information for the newcomer. Second is a ten-lesson "basic course" that covers the gramar and hits the high points of usage--the lessons are acceptable, but not outstanding. Third--and the real strength of the book--is an intermediate-level reader of texts, with notes and commentary. Last of all, a word list that makes up a reasonable "my first Esperanto dictionary" before buying, say, the Wells dictionary. There are better choices for a first book on the language--in particular, the Teach Yourself entry--but I think this book is hard to beat for the _second_ book you put on your shelf, to expand your skills and deepen your understanding. That's how I'm using it right now, and I'm quite satisfied.

I've tried other books before, but this is the esperanto teacher that I was actually able to complete. There's a history of the Esperanto Movement, ten lessons, lots of reading material and an esperanto-english dictionary (in that order). I found the book exactly what *I* needed in order to learn basic esperanto. If you're a beginner, then this is the book for you.

If you are curious about Esperanto or if you want to introduce someone to it, this is the single best all-in-one volume. Its four parts (history of the "language problem", short course, readings, and a short dictionary) provide everything you need to get started (and more--honestly, the language is so easy). If you then need more material, there are many thousands more books and compact discs in existence, though Amazon.eo has yet to appear.