Kien de ĉi tie: three thousand roots, and what to read

You have finished the course. The next step is not more vocabulary: it is use. Three thousand roots is the frequent part of the language, and it lets you learn the rest by reading and talking.

• Kien de ĉi tie? - Where to from here?

What three thousand roots buys you

The folk claim is that a root is worth ten words. Nobody has counted that. Here is a count somebody did make, in the big monolingual dictionary, the Plena Ilustrita Vortaro (PIV), 2002 edition:

That is a floor. A dictionary lists only the derivations somebody thought worth listing. The affixes are productive, so you can build a word today that no dictionary has, and be understood:

• neforgesebla - unforgettable
• Tiu kongreso estis neforgesebla. - That congress was unforgettable.

It is not the whole language. Three thousand is a little under a fifth of PIV's 16,780. But your three thousand are the frequent ones, so an unknown word in a real sentence usually splits into roots you already hold. The word-building system is what turns that into reading.

Read

Reading is the highest-value habit, and the order matters: stay in graded books one step longer than your pride wants.

• Gerda malaperis! - Gerda has disappeared!

What to read, in order has the whole shelf. Books to buy lists the coursebooks, readers and dictionaries we recommend, with Amazon links, and our own stories stay the easiest start.

The cheapest daily habit is one Vikipedio article on something you already know: over 300,000 of them, free.

• Mi legas unu artikolon ĉiutage. - I read one article every day.

Listen

Esperanto has no country, so nobody hears it by accident: every hour of listening has to be arranged. Climb the listening ladder:

• Mi aŭskultas podkaston en la trajno. - I listen to a podcast on the train.

Fixed stress on the second-last syllable (Rule 10) makes word boundaries easier to hear once your ear is tuned. Short and daily beats long and occasional.