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Step 1
Buy an English to Esperanto dictionary. The language consists of only about two thousand words, and many other words can be formed with suffixes and prefixes.
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Step 2
Learn the Esperanto alphabet. The alphabet consists of 28 letters, 22 of them the same as standard English letters. Because each letter only corresponds with one sound, the Esperanto alphabet takes far less time to learn than the English alphabet.
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Step 3
Learn how to conjugate Esperanto verbs. Verbs are given in the infinitive form, with one of three suffixes turning it into a past (-is), present (-as), or future (-os) tense verb. For example, the verb “sidi,” meaning “to sit,” can be conjugated as “sidis,” “sidas,” “sidos” – “I sat,” “I am sitting,” “I will sit.”
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Step 4
Learn some common suffixes and prefixes. By using suffixes, you can take a common root word like “oro” (gold), add –riĉ (rich in), and get “orriĉa” (rich in gold). These affixes allow Esperanto’s relatively small amount of root words to become a huge amount of additional words.
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Step 5
Learn Esperanto’s grammatical rules. Unlike many other languages, Esperanto only has sixteen hard and fast rules, with no exceptions. They include the statements that all adjectives must end in –a and all nouns must end in –o.
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Step 6
Take an online Esperanto learning course. There are many available, and some will even send you a degree when you’re done.
