Background
Earlier this year my youngest son announced that he had decided that he wanted to learn Japanese. My oldest son had been studying German for awhile, and I had been working on French for a couple years. My wife had nothing but high school Spanish, of which we had both taken a few years, and she felt like learning a language was not in the cards for her at all. Trying to get my youngest going with Japanese was quite a chore as my wife had zero interest in it, and although I would like to learn it at some point, it wouldn't be on my radar for quite some time. Since we were not going to be able to help him along we talked about various ways of turning our family multi-lingual in the easiest possible manner.
Ultimately we decided to all learn Esperanto. Here is a link to the original thread over at the old HTLAL. This goal would get us all to fluency in a language other than English, something that had eluded me thus far in French, in the quickest possible manner. We would get an extra boost for our subsequent languages (especially the Romance family) and it would be a great way to ease into things for my youngest. The end goal being that we use Esperanto for all of our family communication until we learn languages that overlap with others in the family and then we would speak with that person in the shared language.
This was something that we all discussed for quite awhile before diving in a few months ago (June 2015). I put my French studies on hold, and my oldest did the same for his German.
Family Status
Chris :: Started with Lernu to get some basics and Memrise to build some vocabulary. Moved to Duolingo when the Esperanto beta became available. Completed my tree a little over a month ago and since then have been reading and listening to a variety of content.
Gave up on Memrise as it totally pissed me off having so many things be wrong with no way to tell it - "yes, I got the answer correct". Should have just pulled the courses into Anki (since they were all available as shared decks) so I could edit all the errors and have control over the answer status. Doesn't really matter though as it gave me a good initial vocab boost, which was all I wanted in the first place. I prefer to consume more content rather than deal with SRS anyway.
Have started in on my stack of books that I am going to get to a little bit later in the post. At this point I can understand a fair bit of the Radio Verda podcasts and Evildea videos, but most stuff is still needing to run through a English verification filter. My wife and I have also been watching Pasporto Al La Tuta Mondo when we have time, mostly using it as a sanity check for our progress and just an additional source of input.
Emily :: My wife is probably 3/4 of the way through her Duolingo tree after starting out the with the same Lernu/Memrise approach. She is still going through Memrise, but is getting more frustrated by the day. Not sure how much longer it will last but she is currently working through reading Gerda Malaperis and Lasu Min Paroli Plu and I have provided her with a bunch more content for when she is ready. Given her high school Spanish experience she is overjoyed at her progress and ability after just these few months.
William :: My oldest son has probably the best ear for the language (well any language really). He is a bit behind my wife in his Duo tree, but far surpasses her in comprehension despite not putting in nearly as much time - which really irritates her! No matter what sentence I speak to him he pretty easily comprehends the meaning. He seems to have a knack for this and I have been encouraging him to start consuming content (videos, some of the pile of books we have, etc), but thus far it hasn't started happening. Not too worried about him though as he seems to just kind of do things in his own way and doesn't need much hand holding.
Benjamin :: My youngest son is having the hardest time out of all of us. He struggles a bit with the English side of things on his Duo tree, and got so frustrated with his Memrise that I just had him drop it. I have been trying out various games with him and encouraging him to spend time watching Mazi and Evildea videos. It may take the rest of us becoming more fluent and having more interactions with him in Esperanto to really get things moving for him. That said, I have been happy that working through the Duo tree has helped his English writing and given him a really gentle introduction to grammar concepts.
Book List
Below is a list of the books that I have available and will be working through. Some are printed books (green), others are epubs (blue), and some are only pdf (purple) files (which means I need to be in front of the computer to read them - unlike my epub files which I can pull onto my eReader). I included a rough page count of each and ordered them in the approximate order I plan to read them. I am currently reading the first three, am about halfway through each, and plan to devour them all.
- La Aventuroj De Alicio En Mirlando - 85 pages
- Amuza Legolibro En Esperanto - 216 pages
- Fajron Sentas Mi Interne - 118 pages
- Cisko Kaj Vinjo - 58 pages
- Karlo - 33 pages
- Ili Kaptas Elzan - 71 pages
- Faktoj aŭ Fantazioj - 431 pages
- Marvirinstrato - 207 pages
- Ĉu vi kuiras ĉine? - 99 pages
- Ĉu li bremsis sufiĉe? - 101 pages
- Ĉu li venis trakosme? - 150 pages
- Ĉu ni kunvenis vane? - 139 pages
- Jaĥto veturas for - 191 pages
- Kazinski venas tro malfrue - 176 pages
- Nigra Magio - 215 pages
- Urd Hadda murdita! - 196 pages
- Robinson Kruso - 85 pages
- La Mirinda Sorĉistro De Oz - 77 pages
- La Bona Lingvo - 68 pages
- Murdo En La Orienta Ekspreso - 147 pages
- La Besto Farmo - 95 pages
- La Nuda Feino - 111 pages
- Vojaĝo al kuniĝo - 362 pages
- Hetajro Dancas - 327 pages
- La Hobito - 224 pages
- Hari Potter kaj la Ŝtono de la Saĝuloj - 196 pages
- Budhismaj Fabloj - 200 pages
- Amo al La Vivo - 306 pages
- Grafo De Monte Kristo Parto Unu - 592 pages
- Grafo De Monte Kristo Parto Du - 592 pages