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 table presents the Modern Symmetrical dialect of Sudre's original binary terms, in which the inversion of syllables in any binary word means something akin to its opposite as outlined in the original Solresol documents. 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:

Verbs

There are 14 core reversible verbs in Modern Solresol, they have the unique particularity that their syllables are sequential. These are more akin to auxiliary verbs in English as they specify a relationship between the subject and the object of the sentence.

• doremi to be, to become
• remifa to send, to apply
• mifasol to hold, to take
• fasolla to combine, to unify
• sollasi to see, to hear
• lasido to stay, to wait
• sidore to know, to think
• miredo to have, to host
• famire to get, to receive
• solfami to move, to give
• lasolfa to compare, to split
• silasol to show, to tell
• dosila to go, to travel
• redosi to act, to change

Verbs are created by association of concepts with relationships:

• remisol miredo to eat
• remisol redosi to cook
• remisol sidore to salivate

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 moving the possessive personal pronoun after the qualifier:

• 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 fala Their health is not good.

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 fala Very good.
• misi fasi Extremely late.
• sifa sire Quite unfair.

Numbers

Numbers can be represented as binary sequences of do and si, prefixed with fala for positive numbers, and lafa for negative numbers. Here are the numbers zero to fifteen in clusters of 4 bits, or a nibble.

Fractional parts are indicated by re. To express an empty cluster, the particle sol is used, the length of the cluster is equal to the others, if a number padded with 4 ●, then the sol particle is equal to multiplying a previous number by 256.

• dodosisi re dosidodo, three quaters.
• dosisido sol, ninety six.
• dosisisi sisidosi sol, two thousands.
• sisisisi sol sol, three thousands eight hundred and fourty.

Proper Nouns

Sudre originally drafted a phonetic alphabet, but had no examples of its usage, and the little that was described outlined a very cumbersome system. Someone on the Sidosi forum suggested a system similar to Katakanas in which syllables may can combined to create a secondary set of syllables, while it still falls short of supporting the majority of sounds needed to borrow words from other languages, it might be of practical consideration for approximating some additional sounds.

Accessibility

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.

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 displaying from a distance enlarged versions of the stenographic signs or the first seven numbers hollowed out and illuminated, if at night. Or, by displaying bright lanterns or fires of the 7 colors.

Curwen hand signs often go along with 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.

Encoding

The Shavian alphabet was originally a constructed alphabet conceived as a way to provide phonemic orthography for the English language. It conveniently includes glyphs to match Vincent Gajewski's stenography based on the Curwen hand shapes.

A possible binary expression of Solresol needs to be capable of packing 7 syllables, a stop and a forte modifier. The mod bit on the spacer encode is a break.

• Official Examples
• Counting in Solresol
• Solresol Grammar
• Original character by Elemenopi, drawn by Rek Bellum.

Ternary Solrela

The following common words are ordered according to the permutations of the Solfege, the ternary table aims to cover most basic words, if the following dictionary can be made clearer, please get in touch with your suggestions! The original religious terms were replaced as per this document and the following categories:

Sutre's original categorization of words by first syllable is altogether incompatible with its concept of reversibility and too arbitrary to be used consistently(at least for the ternary dictionary), and so the original philosophical taxonomy is ignored in favor of the slightly more predictable association of concepts by syllabic inversion. The positive member of a word set is kept above the mirror line whenever possible.

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 Translator
• Solresol Dictionary, en
• Solresol Dictionary, en-fr
• Solresol Dictionary, fr
• Dragibus - Monster

do re mi fa sol la si

Useful Phrases

Below are the translations of a few useful key phrases agreed upon with members of the Solresol community. Thanks to everyone who collaborated and suggested corrections, this page was initially created to improve upon the examples on the Omniglot page, which have since been updated.

incoming thousand rooms wiktopher translations