Messin' With The Monoglots: It Wasn't JUST To Screw With The Trolls That I Mentioned the "E" Word. But I Knew It Would

Just guessing but I'd guess you could pretty well understand all of Spomenka Stimic's book in the original Esperanto if you spent about ten months to a year studying the language from scratch.   Maybe an average of an hour a day with a good text would probably do it.  Less if you resorted to reading it with a dictionary, how one ends up reading most books of any sophistication in any foreign language, even one you've learned well.  I've known language teachers who spoke with fluency and read for decades in French, German, Latin, etc. who ALWAYS had the dictionary close when they were reading.  With Esperanto, after you've made good progress, not so necessary. 

 If you went through Step By Step In Esperanto by Montague Butler you could probably read just about anything written in the language or translated (competently) into it but that might take a couple of years.  You won't in any "natural" language for the same amount of effort. 

You could understand her well-written and easy book,  Esperanto Ne Nur Estas Lingvo if you went through the incredibly fast and easy Zagreb Method material that can be found all over the place online I believe it was written as a continuation of the textbook, to be followed by Claude Piron's Gerda Malaperis perhaps, also, the kind of surreal book that expands on that, Lasu Min Paroli Plu.  I would guess that with a fairly simple dictionary (the one by Montague Butler is a lot better and there are newer ones available online) to get you past any vocabulary problems, an intelligent student would be able to master it in as little as three months. 

There is a far less scientifically constructed first book, Esperanto For Beginners, by M. Butler, which I know the British Esperanto Association has released into public domain but I don't have time to look for the link, as well as an adaptation of the old 10 lesson correspondence course that Esperanto USA used to administer - at least it did back when it was The Esperanto League For North America.   If anyone expresses interest in those I'll look for them but the Zagreb course is very good and, if you really work it with the associated follow-up texts, quite sufficient.  And it's friggin' free, for the love of Mike.  Someone once said that his experience is that when he was traveling people who spoke Esperanto wanted to talk, people who spoke English wanted you to buy.  

As to the oft-made ignorant claim that "Esperanto is dead" or some such thing, here's one of the most popular Youtube Esperanto channels, from Evildea, an Australian who, when I heard one of his English language videos, I discovered I can understand his Esperanto better than I can his English. 

The day after a major U.S. holiday is always slow on most American-based blogs.  I figure it's a good day to tease the trolls and outrage their conventional and pre-furnished minds.  

Update:  A sensible sequence for the Zagreb Method would be the textbook, followed by Gerda Malaperis, supplementing that with Lasu Min Paroli Plu, which uses the same vocabulary, grammar as the corresponding chapters of Gerda to enhance familiarity with that material and to give you practice with the all-important agglutinative word-buillding, the thing that allows you to do many times more with a tiny vocabulary in Esperanto than in any "natural language" I know of.  Then you'll have little problem taking up Esperanto Ne Nur Estas Lingvo.   You can find a lot of basic material.  If anyone wants advice about that, let me know. 

I will mention, on the chance anyone uses this, that you can download a very useful tool, the Esperantilo a sort of word processor which allows you to easily type the letters with accents, to spell check.  I've never really paid attention to the grammar checker so I don't know how well it works but I've used it for years with little to complain about.  Again, it's free.