When I said Esperanto was difficult for me I really meant it, it wasn't an attack. Even though I had these problems I'm still learning it.

I've come to realize that the affixes are not that bad and even languages that claim to be "isolate" still use them. In Chinese "-jia" denotes family. In Japanese "-nin" denotes something similar to "-er" in English or "-ero" or "-ano" in Esperanto.

I am slowly learning to accept the affixes now. I've learned "bo-". bopatrino (Mother in law), bopatro (father in law). So, I'd say I'm catching on.

I just find it fun to wonder how the language would have been if. I also wondered how English would be withOUT German influence and only Latin influence.

Or if Esperanto was written like Semitics:

m sts flc

would any one still be able to understand. It's just all fun in games and by playing around like this I'm actually learning more vocabulary in a fun way.

Arpee:
I did indeed type a question in the Esperanto section when I got bored of typing in English but even if I didn't it wouldn't matter because this is the English section and this is what this forum is for "This is a place for discussing various topics in English."

Oh then that is different. I apologize for my attitude earlier, I spent some time today trying to explain how to change a password online to somebody who couldn't understand the concept of an 'address bar' or 'now click on that button'. I could not help her reset her password because she couldn't even find our site! My question...How did she even know she needed to change her password if she couldn't find the bank's website in the first place? OMG.

I guess I meant, people can be really dumb. I should not have assumed you were dumb, just asking reasonable questions in a reasonable way. I think I like you now.

orthohawk:
There's a very interesting thought experiment out there called "Brithenig" to create a Romance language that might have evolved if Latin had displaced the native Celtic language as the spoken language of the people in Great Britain, plus they were able to keep the Anglo-Saxons and Danes at bay .

That's EXACTLY what I was thinking of! Thank you so much Orthohawk, I was trying to remember that one but it kept slipping my mind!

EDIT: Reading the wikipedia page for Brithenig, there's also:
Breathanach (a more Gaelic version)
Judajca (a hebrew version)
Þrjótrunn (an icelandic version)
Wenedyk (a polish version) - in the same "con-universe" as Brithenig
Xliponian (a Grimm's Law version)
(of course, not made by the same people).

@ Arpee, here are some links for you:
Yahoo Group for conculture fans

The Anglish Moot

Brithenig

Ill Bethisad wiki

Ill Bethisad culture

Artistic languages on Wikipedia

Blueprints to Babel

(Also, an aside, if we end up going further off topic let's take the conversation to private messages, since one esteemed forumano has expressed their worry about that. Otherwise, if we're staying on the alternative history of EO or "what we'd do if we were back in the golden age of IALs", then things should be good).

Back on topic:

I've heard somewhere that Zamenhoff's system is somewhat related to Semitic word construction somehow. Erinja might have mentioned that or at least said something about the idea, I can't remember (sorry Erinja! ). But I guess that's what the as/is/os system is like, since often the vowels inside a hebrew verb change depending on the tense. That apparently is also related to an archaic method of changing verb tenses in Indo European languages which the Germanic languages and Greek retain.

That said, back in the day there was a lot of fondness for the changing-the-final-vowel system of word differentiation I've heard, so it might not be semitically derived as much as building on prior ideas (Volapük for example used vowel endings at the end of a word to change the meaning, but unlike Esperanto, stressed the final vowel over the rest of the word, where as Esperanto stresses the final syllable before the final vowel, which I think is a smart idea of Zamenhoff's not because I like the sound, but because it sort of allows greater flexibility with the evolution of word roots by separating them from the word endings. Which sort of gave it a bit of naturalness (is there a word for that?) reflecting the way many older naturally evolving languages work(ed) (which often stress the root of a word over all the suffixes added to it).