Product Description
Esperanto is a constructed language, designed to be far easier to learn than any national tongue.If you have never before attempted to learn a foreign language, it is the ideal language with which to start.It is also a useful tool in international research and travel.This dictionary and phrasebook features an extensive vocabulary, an overview of Esperanto grammar, and important phrases for communicating with the ever-growing network of Esperantists around the world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

A bit disappointing
This is more of a phrase book than a dictionary.If there were a country where Esperanto is an official language, it would be very useful for tourists.We learn how to meet and greet people, how to order food and drink in restaurants, discuss the weather, etc.

As there isn't such a country, I'm not sure who the book is aimed at.It's certainly not for people who want to read Esperanto literature.

Maybe it's for members of Esperanto societies who meet and talk in Esperanto?If so, it's a small book, not expensive and worth buying.But it's not for a wide audience.

Not much of a dictionary
I bought this several years ago from a bookstore which ordered it for me. Had I known that the dictionary is sparse in content I would have passed it by. If you are looking for an excellent Esperanto-English dictionary search for Concise Esperanto Dictionary.

The phrase book portion of the book is hardly worth reading. There are a few gems but nothing that one couldn't learn elsewhere.

Esperanto is a fun language to learn and this book does it no justice.

An absolutely awful book, a disgrace!
This book appears to have generated quite a few reviews already but I felt moved to put in my own two cents (or rather twelve bucks worth!) on it just to get the frustration off my chest.
When I bought this dictionary, I wasn't expecting anything too grand- after all it's not particularly big and I did take a look at some of the other reviews before purchasing, so I had some idea.My hope was that this dictionary would be a convenient reference for the most common Esperanto words. What I did not expect however, was the useless white elephant I ended up with!This book is utterly useless! It doesn't contain even basic words (like "decide" for example), the phrasebook at the end is a risible waste of space that just eats up pages that could be devoted to actual lexis.
I can honestly find nothing good to say about this book- frankly the vocabulary list at the end of Ivy Kellerman's excellent grammar book has been of much greater use to me.
I read on one of the reviews here that this book was prepared by one of North America's leading Esperantists.Well, if anything, that makes matters much worse! The author should be ashamed to have tossed such a piece of inadequate garbage on the market! Unfortunately, Esperanto is much under-catered for and an absence of good learning texts just serves all the more to push the language to the margins.If we ever want to turn Esperanto into a viable project again rather than the marginal refuge of cranks and fruitcake idealists we really have to start getting some appealing and useful texts out on the market.Garbage like this dictionary hinders rather than helps the esperantist project.

Good book
For who is learning Esperanto and is already reading another book, this is a good complement, to be kept at your hands when you have some doubts, or you need to learn more way of saying.

Praising with faint damns ...
This is a convenient little book for the individual who may occasionally use Esperanto but doesn't want to learn it in depth. The grammatical overview seems to be quite good, though the section on affixes could use some examples. I can also recommend the phrasebook section. The dictionary, however, should not be used without having at hand a more authoritative dictionary against which to check it. I particularly enjoyed the author's comment about the need to determine the transitivity or intransitivity of Esperanto verbs (p. 7), coupled with the fact that the dictionary does not provide this information either implicitly or explicitly; see e.g. "komenci" on p. 36 or its equivalent "to begin" on p. 66. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Warning: English-to-Esperanto only
Be warned--- this dictionary is English-to-Esperanto only. If you are learning or using Esperanto in any way, you will need a dictionary with an Esperanto-to-English section as well.I recommend the one by J. C. Wells.

While this dictionary is very comprehensive, I still use my Wells dictionary much more and find it more reliable.Neither dictionary indicates whether an Esperanto word comes from the Fundamento or is official.The CEED does keep some of the more recent neologisms in a ghetto in the back of the book, however. (I'd rather see the neologisms in the dictionary proper, but marked, and perhaps with a more common Esperanto word given as an alternative.)

I believe that any English-speaking Esperantist who already possessed the Wells dictionary would get some good use out of this more complete, but one way only dictionary.

Indispensible, but could be better
CEED is almost universally recommended as the best English-Esperanto dictionary out there, and from what I've seen, it definitely is. Yet, it still falls a bit short of what we really need in the ideal English-Esperanto dictionary.

The first major problem is that is NOT comprehensive... this isn't for lack of bizarrely specialized words "azygous" (which it has) or "nicad" (which it also has), but actually useful words like "coconut" and "furry," which are nowhere to be found.

Benson is overly fond of grouping related words together, rather than simply using the alphabetical order one expects in a dictionary. If you look up the entry for "nut", you'll also find the translations for Brazil nut, candlenut, chestnut, "nut" in slang uses, "nut" in the sense of nut and bolt, etc. I imagine he meant to include "coconut" here, but in departing from simple alphabetizing, this (and many other would-be entries) were inadvertently left out.

Similarly for "furry," if you look up "fur" you'll find the definition for a mammal's skin (pelto), clothing made from it (peltajxo) and "fur" as "coating on the tongue" (tartro)! But something got left out... what is is it that you pet when you pet your cat? Nothing directs you to the word in general use for fur, "hararo" with its adjective form "harara" serving for furry. However, if you want to look up the words "furan" or "furbelow" (whatever they are), don't worry, they have their proper Esperanto equivalents proudly printed at their side.

Secondly, the given Esperanto equivalents sometimes seem to represent a personal preference rather than the predominant usage among Esperanto speakers. For instance, if you want to know the word for "airplane," the translation is simply given as "avio." The fact is that "aviadilo" is still the most common word for "airplane," although "avio" is thankfully gaining in popularity. Benson translates "aircraft" correctly as "aviadilo" but doesn't indicate that it still is the everyday word to use for airplane, as well.

Thirdly, there is no Esperanto grammar provided. It's common for most bilingual dictionaries to include a short grammatical summary, and after the wonderful 35-page grammatical summary of Esperanto in J.C. Wells' Teach Yourself Esperanto Dictionary, it's a travesty for any later effort to omit this.

Lastly, why not an Esperanto-English dictionary with it? The one-way direction of this dictionary means that everyone is forced to turn to another source for translating unfamiliar Esperanto words to English. If Benson had skimped on the esoteric entries, there could well be room for a Esperanto-English section, which given the nature of Esperanto's structure, would be much shorter than the English-Esperanto section.

Now the good news, and it is VERY good:

In spite of all shortcomings, CEED IS an essential tool. It does have the vast majority of the words you'll need, and its translations are always understandable even if they are sometimes more specific, or more unusual than you would expect.

But by far the greatest advantage is its numerous full-sentence translations of idiomatic English expressions into Esperanto. This is goes far beyond what I've seen any other bilingual dictionary attempt. The entry for "go" for example, has a page-and-a-half of wonderful example sentences on almost every sense of the word you can imagine. The helpfulness of this feature cannot be exaggerated. No Anglophone Esperantist should be without it.

Very thorough coverage of English, but...
The coverage of English and the distinction between various senses of the English words and idioms defined is very thorough.However, the Esperanto equivalents given are not always the words in most common use for the given concept.Benson has a tendency to list a precise neologism while failing to mention the actual, everyday word for the concept (which may have a broader or less precise meaning than the rarely used word).E.g., for "to count" he lists "kompti", a word hardly ever used, and does not mention "kalkuli", the word routinely used for that action (though it also means "to calculate, do arithmetic", etc.).There are several similar errors that make me hesitate to trust Benson on any given word until I have checked what he tells me against other sources such as the Plena Vortaro or the Reta Vortaro.But, in combination with other sources, Benson can be very useful, especially in translating materials from English into Esperanto.

An Excellent Reference
This reference lives up to it's claim..."Comprehensive". If you're going to write in esperanto this a great book to have. I selected it over other works because it appeared to be the most up-to-date esperanto dictionary available, although I do wish it went both ways (ENG <-> ESP). Though I'm new to the language of esperanto, those who have an expert command of the language have also recommended this as a top-notch reference for both beginners and experienced speakers.

Thorough, Pragmatic [few flaws]
Most English words, from the common [eg."of"=multiple listings] to technical, medical/scientific and some needing an unabridged ENGLISH dictionary are included, generally justifying the 'Comprehensive' in thetitle. Colloquialisms and neologisms are noted. The biggest lack I find iswhen there is room for a notation which would help the user categorizeanobscure word [with sci/med/mil etc.] and that is not done. Overall, this isan eminently worthwhile book for anyone intersted in Esperanto! ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Esperanto Grammar, Esperanto Orthography, Esperanto Vocabulary, Esperanto Phonology, Esperanto Etymology, Esperanto Profanity, Modern Evolution of Esperanto, Most Common Words in Esperanto, Special Esperanto Adverbs, Interrogatives in Esperanto. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 108. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Esperanto is a constructed auxiliary language. A highly regular grammar makes Esperanto much easier to learn than most other languages of the world, though particular features may be more or less advantageous or difficult depending on the language background of the speaker. Parts of speech are immediately obvious, for example: he suffix -o indicates a noun, -a an adjective, -as a present-tense verb, and so on for other grammatical functions. An extensive system of affixes may be freely combined with roots to generate vocabulary; and the rules of word formation are straightforward, allowing speakers to communicate with a much smaller root vocabulary than in most other languages. It is possible to communicate effectively with a vocabulary built upon 400 to 500 roots, though there are numerous specialized vocabularies for sciences, professions, and other activities. Reference grammars of the language include the Plena Analiza Gramatiko (Complete Analytical Grammar) by Kálmán Kalocsay and Gaston Waringhien, and the Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko (Complete Handbook of Esperanto Grammar) by Bertilo Wennergren. Esperanto has an agglutinative morphology, no grammatical gender, and simple verbal and nominal inflections. Verbal suffixes indicate four moods, of which the indicative has three tenses, and are derived for several aspects, but do not agree with the grammatical person or number of their subjects. Nouns and adjectives have two cases, nominative/oblique an...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=10402 ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Esperanto, Basic English, Ido, Volapük, Interlingua, Novial, Lincos, Occidental Language, Toki Pona, Glosa, Lingua Franca Nova, Uropi, Latino Sine Flexione, Esperanto Ii, Mondlango, Globish, Neo, Folkspraak, Idiom Neutral, Comparison Between Ido and Novial, Solresol, Bolak, Proto-Esperanto, Modern Indo-European, Pasilingua, Universalglot, Slovianski, Tutonish, Dutton Speedwords, Reformed Esperanto, Europanto, Balaibalan, Sona Language, Communicationssprache, Noxilo, Mondial, Afrihili, Spokil, de Wahl's Rule, Eurolengo, Zonal Constructed Languages, Mundolinco, Lingua Sistemfrater, Academia Pro Interlingua, Babm, Euronord, Mirad, Willem Jacob Visser, Mezhdunarodny Nauchny Yazyk, Universalis Lingua Slavica, Universalspraket. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 119. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: ·) is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887. The word esperanto means "one who hopes" in the language itself. The language's original name was "La Internacia Lingvo." Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy to learn and politically neutral language that would serve as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding. Esperanto has approximately one thousand native speakers, i.e. people who learned Esperanto as one of their native languages from their parents. There is controversy over the number of people who are fluent in Esperanto. Estimates range from 10,000 to as high as two million. The users are spread in about 115 countries. This diverse and international community is evidence to most Esperanto speakers that the language is usable by people from all over the world and that it...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=9248 ... Read more

Product Description
This is nonfiction commentary.Chapters: Incubus, Gattaca, Blade: Trinity, Esperanto Film, Angoroj. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 38. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Gattaca is a 1997 American science fiction film written and directed by Andrew Niccol. It stars Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law with supporting roles played by Loren Dean, Ernest Borgnine, Gore Vidal and Alan Arkin. The film was a 1997 nominee for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction Set Decoration. The film presents a biopunk vision of a society driven by liberal eugenics. Children of the middle and upper classes are selected through preimplantation genetic diagnosis to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. A genetic registry database uses biometrics to instantly identify and classify those so created as "valids" while those conceived by traditional means are derisively known as "in-valids". While genetic discrimination is forbidden by law, in practice it is easy to profile a person's genotype resulting in the Valids qualifying for professional employment while the In-Valids (who are considered to be more susceptible to disease, illness, educational disfunction and shorter lifespans) are relegated to menial jobs. The movie draws on concerns over reproductive technologies which facilitate eugenics, and the possible consequences of such technological developments for society. It also explores the idea of destiny and the ways in which it can and does govern lives. Characters in Gattaca continually battle both with society and with themselves to find their place in the world and who they are destined to be according to their genes. The title is based on the initial letters of the four DNA nitrogenous bases (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine). During the credits the letters G, C, T, ...http://booksllc.net/?id=42886 ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Modern Language Review, published by Modern Humanities Research Association on October 1, 2000. The length of the article is 982 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Esperanto, Interlinguistics, and Planned Language.(Review)
Author: Chris Gledhill
Publication: The Modern Language Review (Refereed)
Date: October 1, 2000
Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association
Volume: 95Issue: 4Page: 1167(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Kim J. Henriksen, Freundeskreis, Persone, Dolchamar, Kajto. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 30. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Kim Jan Henriksen - (also known as "Kimo", b. 28 October 1960 in Copenhagen) is a Danish Esperantist singer-musician. From his Polish-born mother Bogumila Maria Henriksen and Danish-born father Kai L. Henriksen he learned Esperanto as a child, becoming prominent in the Esperanto youth movement and in the world of Esperanto rock music in the 1980s and 1990s. Kim Henriksen and his Polish-born wife speak Esperanto at home and are raising their son as a second-generation Esperanto native speaker. Henriksen's enthusiastic musicianship on behalf of Esperanto and cross-cultural understanding through rock music has earned him popularity both in Europe and America. American linguist Arika Okrent, who spent five years researching her book on constructed languages from Klingon to Esperanto, bookends a chapter on the growth of the Esperanto language with anecdotal descriptions of the role of Kim Henriksen. In distinguishing the success of Esperanto as the most widely spoken planned language from the cult followings of artificial argots like Klingon and from the mixed success of attempts to revive once-declining natural languages like Irish, she points out the great degree of fluency she observed at international Esperanto congresses: " appeared not to appreciate how bizarre it was to be a native speaker of an invented language. Esperanto was the medium of his parents' relationship and of the entire home life of their family. "Before you start getting indignant on his behalf, know that growing up he had plenty of contact with the world outside his home and learned to speak Danish as a native too. But he considered Esperanto his true mother tongue. For Kim...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=17768541 ... Read more

Product Description
An international auxiliary language is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language. An auxiliary language is primarily a second language. Languages of dominant societies over the centuries have served as auxiliary languages, sometimes approaching the international level. French and English have been used as such in recent times in many parts of the world. However, as these languages are associated with the very dominance?cultural, political, and economic?that made them popular, they are often met with strong resistance as well. For this reason, some have turned to the idea of promoting an artificial or constructed language as a possible solution. The term "auxiliary" implies that it is intended to be an additional language for the people of the world, rather than to replace their native languages. Often, the phrase is used to refer to planned or constructed languages proposed specifically to ease worldwide international communication, such as Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua. ... Read more

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CD-ROM Edition For reading or research No illustrations, not an audio CD, produced in a Microsoft Word Compatible format for your reading or research.About The Author:Edith Wharton (January 24, 1862August 11, 1937) was an American novelist, short story writer and designer.Excerpt:"La horo estas tro malfrua por trafi trajnon hodiauxvespere. Sed mi veturos per la unua morgauxmatena trajno." Sxi meditis momenton. "Eble tio estas pli bona. Mi bezonas paroli kun Suzino unue. Sxi renkontos min cxedoke kaj mi veturigos sxin rekte al la hotelo kun mi."Dum sxi evoluigis tiun planon, sxi spertis la senton ke Ido ankoraux sxin rigardas, penseme, ecx seriozege. Kiam sxi finparolis, li restis senparola dum momento. Tiam li diris, preskaux ceremonie: "Se via interparolado kun Frauxlino Suferno ne dauxras gxis tro malfrua horo, cxu mi rajtas alveni vin viziti post gxi? Mi vespermangxos cxe mia klubo kaj mi telefonos al vi je cxirkaux la deka, se vi permesos. Mi survojigxos morgauxmatene, cele al Cxikago, por negocoj, kaj placxus al mi ekscii, antaux mia foriro, ke via kuzino sukcesis vin trankviligi, pri kio mi jam antauxcertas." ... Read more