The words in Solresol consist of sequences of notes.

Invented by Jean-François Sudre, Solresol is an artificial language based on the seven syllables of Music(do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si). There are no specific pronunciation rules beyond the standard readings of the solfège.

Due to each syllable being fairly distinct, they may be pronounced in almost any way the reader prefers, but it is necessary to leave a brief pause between words so that each word remains clearly separate. It is absolutely unnecessary to be familiar with music to learn and to speak this language.

The language is made of permutations of the 7 syllables, but before we get into words, let's begin with the elementary particles of one note:

The following document presents the Modern Symmetrical dialect of Sudre's original terms of two notes, to learn more about the differences, see dialects. This is the variance of Solresol used in the novel Wiktopher, in which words of 2 notes are used for pronouns, common particles and those with repeated syllables are tenses:

A unique feature of words of two and three syllables is that their meanings can be inverted by reversing the syllables in the word, making palindromes(words that are read the same in either directions) their own category of words dedicated to words with meanings that may not be unambiguously reversed. For instance fala means good or tasty, and lafa means bad. Here are some examples:

Grammar

To keep sentences clear, especially with the possibility of information loss while communicating, certain parts of speech follow a strict word order. Adjectives always follow the noun they modify. Indirect objects always come after the verb. Tenses always precede verbs. Pronouns are usually omitted unless a specification is must be made, as in "In regards to you".

Affirmative statements are indicated by a qualifier followed by the possessive personal pronoun:

• domisol redo I'm healthy.
• solsimi soldo We're unlucky.
• mifare fado She's fun.

Questions are indicated by placing the subject of the sentence after the verb instead of before the verb.

• dola rela dore I know you?
• misisol dosi Are they lucky?
• solmila domi Do you remember?

Negation is indicated by placing do before the word to be negated and is not repeated unnecessarily.

• do solsol dofare Don't stare.
• dore do fafa lamisol I couldn't forget.
• sido domisol do lafa Their health is not bad.

Modality is indicated by using fasi before an adjective for the augmentative and after an adjective for the superlative. It is the same for substantives. Placed before an adjective, sifa is diminutive, and placed after an adjective is the further diminutive.

• fasi domisol redo I'm very healthy.
• misi fasi rela You are extremely late.
• sifa sire It's quite unfair.

Tenses precede actions, pronouns need to be explicitly stately unless the subject changes.

• dodo mirefado was saying
• rere mirefado had said
• mimi mirefado will say
• fafa mirefado would say
• solsol mirefado let's say
• lala mirefado saying
• sisi mirefado said

Numbers

Numbers all use doubled notes and are formed using the French-style assemblage eighty-ten to form ninety. Arithmetic and fractions are expressed using the infix notation. Larger numbers are formed by writing the bigger units first.

• remimi farere fafare mimifa 229.
• fafasol redodo lafadola relala 41/5.
• resisi mimisol 6:10.

Accessibility

Two people facing each other at a distance, can communicate using the stenographic symbols in such a way that only they can see them. In this manner, a prisoner can, through the bars of the window, express thoughts to the outside world, and vice-versa.

One can make use of Solresol at sea, to communicate from one ship to another, or from a ship to a seaport, or vice-versa, and again in many ways: By playing tones, or if at night, by displaying bright lanterns or fires of the 7 colors.

To communicate to a deaf-mute, one can take the hand of a blind person and alternately press the fingers, as in the mute Universal Language. One can see that the three extended fingers replace the three lines of the musical scale. For the repeated notes, one makes the same sign two times with the hand.

Curwen hand signs often go along with the Solfa Scale. These provides a movement to go along with the pitch that we're singing. Moving our bodies at the same time as singing, and thinking and using our voices gives us another way to understand what we're doing. It engages another part of our brains, which means that we work more actively and understand what we're doing.

Phonetic Alphabet & Proper Nouns

Lastly, Sudre originally specified an encoding for proper nouns in which the Consonants(2) rows are repeated notes, the Consonants* rows are accented on the first syllable, a feature that is not present in Symmetric Solresol. Similarly to Japanese, these extra phonemes are only ever used to approximate sounds and will inevitably create homophones.

For a word like Nin tendo, which might cause an ambiguity with the junction of n and t, a space is placed there to make explicit the separation of vowels.

Translator

That's it! I hope that you enjoy learning Solresol, try learning a few useful phrases, or expand your vocabulary with the translator below.
Soldosolsi!

• La Lasirela, Discord
• Original character by Elemenopi, drawn by Rek Bellum.

do re mi fa sol la si

Resolsido Larela

Below are the translations of a few useful key phrases agreed upon with members of the Solresol community.

Refafa Solrela

The following table of ternary permutations aims to cover most basic words, to learn more, see Solresol Dialects. Some of the original terms, listed in italic, were replaced by community edits.

Sudre's original categorization of words by first syllable is altogether incompatible with its concept of reversibility and too arbitrary to be used consistently, but to preserve compatibility with other dialects, the ternary dictionary has been left mostly untouched. In time, disused words will become overloaded with modern meanings.

This guide covers the basics of Modern Solresol, but Sudre filled countless pages with additional words of 4 syllables that can be used to expand your vocabulary. Have fun learning and using Solresol.

• Solresol-English Translator
• Common Words List
• Dragibus - Monster

Resoldodo Solresol

Roudo Ses, Condensed Solresol, is a way of talking by alternating between using the consonant or the vowel of each note. To disambiguate between syllables with the same letters, like si/sol or fa/la, we will use the pair (s . ou) for sol, (l . au) for la and (t . iu) for si. When a word is one syllable, the vowel is used.

• ses: solresol
• di a: domi fa
• far rous: fafare resolsol
• mius soum: misisol solsolmi
• fiu siu: fasi solsi
• saud, mode?: Sollado, midodore?

Sollasoldo Solresol

Sauso Ses, Stenographic Solresol, is a way of writing using the Shavian alphabet which conveniently includes glyphs to match the Curwen hand shapes.

An alphabet to match Solresol's unique characteristics utilizes the similarity of a specific glyphs to its corresponding hand gestures. The following works by accenting letters preceding a note with a chromatic distance of +1 with a dot above, and with a dot below for a chromatic distance of -1.

This plays on the particularity of Solresol of being written entirely with only 7 characters, so that with a diacritics(the dot) placed above a letter to represent the distance of a higher note, and below for a lower note; each word can be written in only as few strokes that is required and rival the density of other natural languages.

Solsifasi Siresol

Over the many years of its existence, the Solresol language has evolved in subtle ways, principally through changes to its lower dictionaries as words went in and out of favor, and better reflected the interests of the communities that kept the language alive.

• François Sudre: Original specs. Fasol: Voici.
• Boleslas Gajewski: Revised specs. Fasol: Why?
• Modern Solresol: Community specs. Sisol: Honorific Particle.
• Symmetric Solresol: Wiktopher specs. Mido: Your(sing).

Modern Symmetrical tries to address a few issues at once. Its central focus is to facilitate the learning of the language and its communication by clustering similar words together by using Solresol's syllabic inversion, so one need only learn wet to know how to spell dry.

The second point is to remove artifacts of the French language present in the grammar, as well as terms pertaining to Christianity in the lower dictionaries, to begin approaching the language's original point of doing away with at least some linguistic biases.

Symmetry

A unique feature of Solresol is that it can express opposite meanings by reversing the words, syllable by syllable. For instance fala means good or tasty, and lafa means bad. Unfortunately, this attribute was used only occasionally in the table of two syllables, mostly abandoned in the table of tree syllables, and altogether ignored beyond.

A few symmetrical words from the original dictionary were kept unchanged even if their polarity(the orientation of the positive term) seems to be contrary to the rest: dolami, dolasol, dosimi, redomi, mifado, ...

Gender

In traditional Solresol, grammatical categories are distinguished by the position of an accent over the notes, indicating that the note should be lengthened. A verb is unstressed throughout, the noun is stressed on the first note, the adjective on the next-to-last, and the adverb on the last. The feminine is marked by final stress. By default, all animate nouns and pronouns imply that they are of male sex. To differentiate the female sex, a bar, hyphen or macron is added to the final syllable of the corresponding article or the word itself.

As of modern Solresol, pronouns no longer change depending on gender. The definitions of sila and lasi are part of an honorifics system inspired by what is used in Japanese; both are gender-neutral titles, one to be respectful, and one to be affectionate.

Christianity

There are many words of 3 syllables relating to Christianity(the trinity, holy virgin, christ, etc..) cluttering the two and three syllable dictionary, for the language to be inclusive, it should do away with these altogether.

Numerals

Solresol has the french habit of forming numbers like ninety five, by using eighty-fifteen.

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