Language & Words
Esperanto Quiz
L. L. Zamenhof's universal language — 137 years and never quite catching on
L. L. Zamenhof's universal language — 137 years and never quite catching on
L. L. Zamenhof's children all died in the Holocaust — and Hitler personally attacked Esperanto in Mein Kampf as a Jewish conspiracy. Despite that history, Esperanto has become by far the world's most successful constructed international auxiliary language. Today, somewhere between 100,000 and two million people speak it worldwide, and a tiny but passionate community even raises children with Esperanto as their first language.
Each round presents 10 randomized questions from a pool of 50, with four multiple-choice options and instant feedback after every answer. Your final score comes with a performance tier and shareable results.
You'll cover Zamenhof's life and motives, the 1887 Unua Libro, Esperanto's 28-letter alphabet, agglutinative grammar, the parts of speech endings (-o, -a, -e, -as/-is/-os), the green star symbol, the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), Pasporta Servo, predecessor and rival conlangs (Volapük, Ido, Interlingua), Holocaust persecution, William Shatner's Esperanto film 'Incubus,' and the Duolingo Esperanto course.
Esperanto was invented by L. L. Zamenhof (Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, 1859–1917), a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok. He published the language in his 1887 'Unua Libro' under the pseudonym 'Doktoro Esperanto' — meaning 'Doctor One Who Hopes' — which later gave the language its name.
Estimates vary widely — from 100,000 to as many as two million speakers — most of whom learned it as a second language. There are also about 1,000–2,000 native speakers ('denaskuloj') worldwide who learned it from birth.
Esperanto means 'one who hopes.' It comes from Zamenhof's pseudonym 'Doktoro Esperanto,' which he used when publishing the language in 1887. The word itself is built from Esperanto's own root 'esper' (to hope) and the present participle ending '-anto.'
Last updated: May 2026