I’ve suddenly gotten really interested in Esperanto. Can anyone recommend some webpages or books to me about it?
Geez–sorry to offend you, but I just know that there are a lot (or at least a couple) of hard-core Esparanto people on this board, and I thought they could be more help than a search engine.
Saluton! Gratulojn pro via deziro lerni la Belan Lingvon.
Check out http://www.esperanto.org .
An excellent free Esperanto web course (of which I am a teacher) is available at:
http://alumni.aitec.edu.au/~bwechner/Documents/Esperanto/fec.html
Saluton, ThisYearsGirl!
Bonvenon al Esperantio! (Welcome to the Esperanto-speaking world…) 
I’ll second the recommendation of matt_mcl* about esperanto.org and the Free Esperanto Course**–it is how I started.
I am from English-speaking North America and one thing I discovered is that this may be the area where where Esperanto is known least. I too thought that Esperanto was one of those utopian Sixties things that had died out.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered both that Esperanto was far older than I expected, and that a vigourous self-sustaining Esperanto-speaking culture exists. There are books, periodicals, theatre, cartoons, music, and news broadcasts in Esperanto.
Last summer I went to a festival that was entirely in Esperanto.
I am not a language genius, but I was able to make my way (awkwardly to be sure) in Esperanto almost exclusively for a week. And that after only a year of study! Try that with French!
As a comparison, another Esperanto enthusiast in my city started learning at the same time I did, and he was fluent after six months.
Now I can communicate with people all over the world… and not in English. Comes in useful when I want to avoid that whole anti-globalization English-as-the-imperialist-aggressor-language backlash…
Another good link, the Esperanto FAQ: http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq.html
Lastly, I have heard rumours that quite a few people meet Significant Others at these Esperanto festivals, but I was unable to confirm this. Perhaps my command of the language is not yet good enough…
Oh yeah… I forgot the footnotes:
- If you happen to be a voter in Montreal, vote for matt_mcl. He’s running for Parliament. ( Continuing coverage. ) Maybe we can get a kind of Esperantan-Canadian swing vote happening.
** Matt, that link to Bernd Wechner’s page does not seem to work. (That page was the one that interested me as well.) I have copies of the course in PDF on my page, but I just link to Bernd’s page. Do you know whether his pages are still on the net?
I met my third boyfriend (and first real love), the ever humpy Matt, because we spoke Esperanto.
Sunspaco, la ligo tre bone funkcias en mia komputilo. Bv. reprovu. Se ne, la ligo por la pagho de Marko Rauhamaa estas jene:
(Try this one if the one above doesn’t work:)
They don’t use Esperanto in Escanaba, so how “universal” is it?
You’re probably better off learning the code that Samuel Pepys wrote his famous diaries in. Then you could write dirty messages about courtesans. And so to bed…
Matt_mcl,
Mirinde! Gxi funkcias bone nun. Mi scivolas: kial la eraro… Gxis!
Wow. Now I’m interested! Spanish Class was never my bag anyway and Pig Latin is too, too easy.
From,
Anake