Solresol
From Langmaker
| Conlang | Solresol |
| Author | Jean Francois Sudre |
| Year Began | 1830 |
| Language Type | international auxiliary language |
| Lexicon Size | 583 |
| Etymologies | No |
| Grammar | Yes |
| Sample Texts | No |
| Primer | No |
Solresol is an international auxiliary language designed by Jean Francois Sudre in 1827. He published his major book on it, Langue musicale universelle, in 1866, though he had already been publicizing it for some years. Solresol enjoyed a brief spell of popularity, reaching its pinnacle with Boleslas Gajewski's 1902 publication of Grammaire du Solresol.
Vocabulary
Solresol words are made up of only seven different syllables. These syllables can be represented in a number of different ways — as musical notes of different pitch, as spoken syllables (based on solfege, a way of identifying musical notes), with colours, symbols, hand gestures etc. Thus, theoretically Solresol communication can be done through speaking, singing, flags of different color, etc. — even painting.
As in Ro, the longer words are divided into categories of meaning, based on their first syllable, or note. Words beginning with 'sol' have meanings related to arts and sciences, or, if they begin with 'solsol', sickness and medicine (e.g., solresol, "language"; solsolredo, "migraine"). (Like other constructed languages with a priori vocabulary, Solresol faces considerable problems in categorizing the real world around it sensibly. For example, it's difficult to discriminate in an a priori manner between "apple" and "pear", or between "Monday" and "Tuesday.")
A unique feature of Solresol is that meanings are negated by reversing the syllables in words. For instance fala means good or tasty, and lafa means bad. It is unclear how this interacts with the way words are categorized by their first note.
The following table shows the words of up to two syllables:
| First \ second syllable | (none) | -do | -re | -mi | -fa | -sol | -la | -si |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do- | no, not, neither, nor | (imperfect) | I, me | you [sg] | self, oneself | one, someone | other | |
| Re- | and, as well as | my, mine | (past) | your, yours [sg] | his | our, ours | your, yours [pl] | their |
| Mi- | or, or even | for, in order to/that | who, which (rel pron), that (conj) | (future) | whose, of which | well (adv) | here/there is, behold | good evening/night |
| Fa- | to | what? | with, jointly | this, that | (conditional) | why, for what reason | good, tasty, delectable | much, very, extremely |
| Sol- | if | but | in, within | wrong, ill (adv) | because | (imperative) | perpetually, always, without end, without ceasing | thank, thanks |
| La- | the | nothing, no one, nobody | by | here, there | bad | never, at no time | (present participle) | of |
| Si- | yes, okay, gladly, agreed | the same (thing) | each, every | good morning/afternoon | little, scarcely | mister, sir* | young man, bachelor* | (passive participle) |
* Feminine versions are formed by stressing the last syllable.
Additional features
Additional features of Solresol include:
- highly impartial (equally easy or difficult for everyone, like other a priori constructed languages)
- integrated systems (signs, colors, etc.) for most different handicapped people, immediately operative without special learning)
- gives fast learning success to illiterate people (only 7 syllables or signs or 10 letters to know and to recognise)
- it presents no pronunciation difficulties
- very simple but effective system to differentiate the function of the words in the sentences
After a few years of popularity, it faded into obscurity in the face of more successful languages such as Volapük and Esperanto. The teaching of sign languages to the deaf mute was forbidden between 1880 and 1991 in France, contributing to Solresol's descent into obscurity. Despite this, there is still a small community of Solresol enthusiasts scattered across the world, better able to communicate with one another through the electronic medium of the Internet than they might have in days past.
A more recent constructed language based on musical tones is Eaiea, created by Bruce Koestner, which uses the entire 12-step western chromatic scale.
Stephen Rice writes, "Solresol is important to the history of constructed languages (particularly interlanguages) on several grounds: it was the first artificial language to get beyond the project stage and to be taken seriously as an interlanguage, and it also pioneered certain ideas that have only recently been rediscovered. It is also the first and only musically-based interlanguage, or at least the only one to make any headway. Soresol is memorable because it pioneered the field of practical artificial languages, not erudite philosophical constructs, but systems using ordinary vocabulary, and reserving the shortest forms for the most common ideas:
- It paved the way for the analytical approach to grammar.
- It attempted to be the most phonologically accessible system--its syllables could be mangled considerably and still be perfectly recognizable. Its sounds were generally accessible to anyone from a proper phonemic standpoint (for example, those who aren't comfortable with the L/R distinction could still differentiate between re and la, and sol could be pronounced so without much confusion).
- It was the project most concerned with the needs of the handicapped and the first (and still about the only) system to make a selling point of mainstreaming the blind and deaf."
In Esperanto: Language, Literature, and Community, Pierre Janton makes the point that Solresol can be considered a pasigraphy, since it can be written completely with musical notes.
External links
| Site | Broken Link | Author | Site Languages |
| http://www.uniovi.es/solresol/index1.html | No | Stephen L. Rice | English |
| http://www.ptialaska.net/~srice/solresol/intro.htm | No | NA | English |
