The object of this volume is two-fold. It supplies very full and
comprehensive vocabularies of the words required by the tourist or
traveller, visitor or resident abroad, health or pleasure seeker, and
professional or business man, together with a large number of
conversational sentences of a typical and practical character. The words
and phrases are classified according to subject, and the phonetic
pronunciation of every word is added in accordance with Marlborough's
simple and popular system of phonetics.
With the aid of this book anyone may undertake a trip to a foreign land,
even if he know nothing of the language of the country he is going to,
and, if he will put himself beforehand in communication with
Esperantists in the various places he intends to visit, he will find
them ready to help him in many ways, and his stay abroad will thus be
made much more entertaining and instructive than if he had spent his
time in the conventional manner of the ordinary tourist. A further great
advantage of this international language is, that it opens up to the
traveller, not merely one particular country, but the whole of Europe.
The book also aims at affording a practical guide to Esperanto for the
student, who will find, in the section on Grammar, all that he needs to
give him full insight into and grasp of the language, enabling him with
very little effort to read, write and speak correctly.
By joining an Esperanto Group the learner may have frequent opportunity
of conversational practice, and he will soon find that it is by no means
a difficult matter to become as fluent in the auxiliary language as in
his mother-tongue.[1]
Esperanto is not merely a language for tourists, but already possesses a
rich literature of considerable extent, the beginnings of that
"Weltlitteratur" foreseen by Goethe; it has a press of its own
representing every country of importance in the world, and is constantly
being made use of for professional purposes by doctors, scientists,
teachers, lawyers, soldiers, sailors, merchants, etc., in every quarter
of the globe. It is undoubtedly destined, ere many years have passed, to
become a very important factor in the progress of the world.