Complete Esperanto: Learn to read, write, speak and understand Esperanto (Teach Yourself)

Depends entirely upon listening to an app. Dozens of people cannot get app to work and people are begging for cds or mp3 files. Publisher not responsive. I cannot load app successfully on my device, do this is pretty much useless. Sometimes old tech is better and more reliable. Publisher should have sound files on website or available on YouTube.

There is a lot of information to learn in each chapter. For example, some of the material I learned in chapters 7 and 8 in "Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language," was covered in the first lesson in this book. A lot of vocabulary is given in each chapter, but the way it is presented makes it easier to learn.I found out that by going to library.teachyourself.com and creating an account with them, I could download this book for free and listen to the audio portion in my "library" with them. By the way, the audio at this site was available at least a month before the book became available here in the U.S.A. I agree, I can't seem to figure out how to get the app to work, but I have no problems listening to it online at the above website.I do wish this book was available in hardback, and definitely on Kindle!

Update: Thanks to the material in this book, I was able to successfully pass the B1 CEFR exam in Esperanto, six months after having virtually no experience in the language. And I was told that my level was actually closer to B2 at the time. So, when the book says you can get to B1-B2, believe it!Simply put: if you want to learn Esperanto as it is used today, this is the book you want. There are lots of free Esperanto language learning resources out there. Some are decent, some are terrible, and some were decent in their day but are not good for learning modern Esperanto. Here you have a book that is excellent and teaches modern Esperanto. If you're balking at paying for an Esperanto learning resource, here's how I looked at it: I'm going to spend a bunch of hours learning Esperanto. Shouldn't I try to get the most benefit from those hours?So, what’s good about the book? First, the language is current and authentic. The dialogues tell a story of a young language learner from her first online experiences with other Esperantists to her ultimate trip to Bratislava for the Universala Kongreso. It’s not full of old terms that were current in the 1920s but not today. (Esperanto is a living language! Who knew? Not me, at first.) I especially like the “new expressions” sections. You could easily make a set of flash cards with just these.The other thing I really like about this book is that it represents Esperanto Culture. Critics of the language like to argue that Esperanto has no culture, arguing that music and dances aren’t the majority (or most important parts) of a language's culture. They’re right about that, but totally mistaken that Esperanto culture consists primarily of music and dancing. Music and dancing are NOT what Esperanto culture is. No, Esperanto culture is about delighting in other cultures and especially in people who are different from us. It's about communicating with people who just might not think the same way we do. My experience in Esperantujo so far has been mostly wonderful, talking to people who have quite different points of view from mine. Yes, such communication doesn’t always happen perfectly... as my son said, people can hate each other even if they do speak the same language... but that’s due to individual esperantists, not Esperanto or its culture. This book manages to present that culture, including the important concept of the gufujo.The book isn’t perfect, of course. There’s a few minor errors, there’s no index (but it does have a good bidirectional dictionary). But this is the first edition. The author (Tim) is active on the Duolingo Facebook forum and can be easily contacted with corrections. Finally, the app works but I will admit that it isn’t very easy to use: particularly, I don't like how the app increases the volume to max every time you start it up. I've had my ears blasted out more than once. :-( The Andoid app is a little buggy. And quite honestly, I think the chapter navigation is hard to use. However, it's totally usable, and in any case, these are not the book's fault. The same app is used for all the publisher's books. Complaints should go to the publisher, not the book author.In any case: Minor problems. Decide whether you really want to learn the language. If so, buy the book.

Finally, FINALLY, after all these years, Teach Yourself has a NEWER edition of learning Esperanto! I am very much a beginner and have been trying to learn Esperanto from the old, OLD version and if you could clog thru it without dying of boredom, you could probably learn it from that one. Actually, you can because most of the people I and met online, learned it from that edition but I just couldn't. It was so boring and tired; I kept putting it off and putting it off and was not motivated to learn from it. I know the original author meant well but it seriously needed something more palatable and it has needed a desperate upgrade for years. This new one is fresh and crisp, more of a modern up to date style. The learning method taught is much different and it keeps my attention. I am more excited to see the book everyday than the old one. I do have an old copy and will never get rid of it because it does have some valuable learning to glean from it still. I know that this has been a baby of Tim's (one of the Authors) and others who worked with him, for some time and he deserves all the kudos for getting it done! All of us have been waiting and waiting for a new edition to come out! Its very nicely laid out, easy to grasp. I read a review that said there is a couple of errors or something to do with a certain grammar structure not used often but being a beginner and not far into the book yet, I have no idea what they are talking about nor do I care because I can always ask people in the Esperanto group I belong to, if I get confused. I did give it one star off because while it says on the cover, the audio is online and--I found out later--in an app, you wouldn't know it. I had to ask and was told that if i look on the back lower right corner, it tell you. That is something that really should have been written up front in the beginning of the book. Most other language books from TY come with audio CD's and I was kinda disappointed this book didn't but I know that Esperanto is not exactly a big moneymaker and to do CD's would have been more money and production costs and I get that; so I can live with it. But other than that, I love it!

There is a lot of info in this book...that's nice. It looks like a high school project: the faint, sans serif font makes me wonder if the publishers grew up in the computer age and had never actually seen a real book before. Some pages look like they are the winners of a 'how many boxes, bullets, paragraph variations, and font types can you get on one page' contest. The visual obstacles aren't appreciated in a book of already challenging material. Also, another 'computer age' issue is that one pretty much has to study this book in front of a computer or with 'smart' phone in hand, at least at first. Maybe it's not so bad for younger folks who are used to the look, and studying with a phone (don't know any better.)

This is a great book, detailed, well explained and set out. If you are learning Esperanto than this is a great resource.The downside - to learn a language you need to hear it. Hodder have decided that rather than put a CD with the book or make mp3 files available to download you either listen online with a computer or you download an app onto your mobile phone. Both work - but I do not always study in front on my computer and the App has crashed a few times and I need to re-download the files again for offline listening. So far i have spent more time messing about trying to set up listening to the audio than i have studying Esperanto.So this would have been a five star product, the authors have done a great job, but let down by the publisher not supporting the audio content well. Buy the book but be prepared to work with just the book and only have random access to the audio.

I use Esperanto for at least 3 reasons:1. For making the best friendships of my life! 😃 (it is life-changing)2. As an easy hack to learn other languages. (🤫 it works)3. For traveling the world (cheap, easy and secure).... without being a snobbish idiot forcing others to speak English.Just go buy the book. The mp3's are free on their website.Some other free helpful sites are Duolingo and Lernu (search for them too).People who are sceptical about Esperanto.. well..🤔 they probably didn't learn it! 😄

Learning a new language is always going to be hard but this book is well written and makes it quite easy to learn.

I like the method of the book. Very easy to study anytime. This is my favourite and the best type of language book so far...

Well written and designed book with excellent audio that I listen to on my phone or in car. I am very impressed.