I received a Kindle 2 (ebook reader) as a gift and despite my initial skepticism, it's turned out to be an incredibly useful tool. I use it to read books for pleasure, I use it to read journal article pdfs for uni, and I use it to browse the internet when on the run. And now, I've started to use it to learn Esperanto.

I've been interested in language and Esperanto for years, and have made one or two serious attempts to learn it in the past. So, it's not surprising that when I saw Ivy Kellerman's "A Complete Grammar of Esperanto" available for free download in the Kindle store, I decided to take a peak.

I should mention: The Kindle 2 has no issue displaying the Esperanto alphabet, a problem which I understand plagued the original Kindle.

I immediately loved Kellerman's clear, well thought out style. It is likely not a book that would appeal to everyone, but it very much appeals to me. I began to work through the lessons in the book on my Kindle, and as I did I began to see ways in which the ebook reader is great for learning a language, and ways in which it could be improved toward this purpose. I will discuss some of these points:

The Kindle has a built in English dictionary, which can be used to look up any (English) word as you read. This is a fantastic feature, and its applicability to language learning is clear: By setting an Esperanto-English dictionary as your default, you could have on-the-fly word lookup as your worked through a text. The good news is that you can indeed change your default dictionary and you can indeed create custom dictionaries. The bad news is that AFAIK no one has made one for Esperanto, and furthermore, it seems from experiments with Chinese-English dictionaries that the lookup might not function with non-Roman characters.

The Kindle allows you to highlight passages and type up notes on sections as you read. This a feature that I've come to love while reading through Kellerman's book. I can create a note on the translation exercises and type up my answers while laying comfortably in bed. Later, when I plug my Kindle into my computer, those notes appear as text files on the Kindle's drive. This has worked well for me, but one major problem is that the text input box obscures the bottom third of the page which can be a hassle.

An exciting possibility of the Kindle is its text-to-speech function, where it reads out via a voice synthesizer the text on the page. This will never have the cadence or emotion of a live speaker, but if a similar function were programmed for a language with highly regular pronunciation like Esperanto it would be very cool.

Anyway, these are just some of my thoughts and experiences with using my Kindle to help learn Esperanto. Currently, it's little better than a book, but it suggests to me the promise of something much better.

Hey,

the Kindle dictionary seems to be in Mobipocket eBook *.PRC file format.

Mobipocket Creator Home Edition (MSWIN only) seems to be capable to create *.PRC files.

Google search result: Kindle Formatted Spanish to English Dictionary

old post was:

seems to be that the Kindle dictionary use the StarDict file format. So should be possible to create or convert an excisting Esperanto dictionary to this open spec file format. I'm not a specialist for that but the XML based reta-vortaro could be well prepared for a (Kindle) to StarDict convertion(?).

google search result:

"... Stardict Spanish to English translation diction. This works on the Amazon Kindle. Copy the file to your Kindle and change the dictionary to this file in the setup menu. It will work if it is on the Memory Card of the Kindle 1. Will provide translation of Spanish words. It does have trouble finding the definitions of verbs since forms may vary according to the conjugation. On the Kindle 2 try highlighting the first part of the words to guess the infinitive..."

StarDict en.wikipedia.org

qwertz:Hey,

seems to be that the Kindle dictionary use the StarDict file format. So should be possible to create or convert an excisting Esperanto dictionary to this open spec file format. I'm not a specialist for that but the XML based reta-vortaro could be well prepared for a (Kindle) to StarDict convertion(?).

google search result:

"... Stardict Spanish to English translation diction. This works on the Amazon Kindle. Copy the file to your Kindle and change the dictionary to this file in the setup menu. It will work if it is on the Memory Card of the Kindle 1. Will provide translation of Spanish words. It does have trouble finding the definitions of verbs since forms may vary according to the conjugation. On the Kindle 2 try highlighting the first part of the words to guess the infinitive..."

StarDict en.wikipedia.org

I've looked into this a bit, and you actually have to convert the stardict file to a tab delimited text file and then to a mobi file, which what your link is to. I've found directions on how to do this here:

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=...

As well as located a stardict formatted version of Reto Vortaro, but as I use Linux have been unable to attempt to use the tools to create a mobipocket esperanto-english dictionary.

My other remark is due to some users reporting problems with instant lookup when there are diacritical marks, though some users report French-English dictionaries to work, so I don't know.

xdzt:
I've looked into this a bit, and you actually have to convert the stardict file to a tab delimited text file and then to a mobi file, which what your link is to.

Thanks a lot. I didn't get it in the beginning that the Kindle finaly requires a Mobipocket eBook *.PRC dictionary(?) file.