Lesson 2: Basic Words and Grammar

(For Lesson 1: An Introduction, click here.)

Words in Solresol are formed, as you might expect, by creating combinations of syllables from its alphabet. Because of its limited size, almost every combination from 1 to 4 syllables in length has unique meaning, and synonyms are avoided. In total, there are 2260 words of four syllables or fewer - which is sufficient for almost all communication.

In general, the smallest words in Solresol have the most basic meaning, and the longer words are more specific. This fact aids learning, because one can start with shorter and easier to remember words. The first seven words to familiarize yourself with, for example, are:

One-Syllable Words
Do	-	No, not, neither, nor, etc.
Re	-	And
Mi	-	Or
Fa	-	To, at
Sol	-	If
La	-	The
Si	-	Yes

Most of these words are not immediately useful, but knowing them from the beginning will help you create sentences as you learn the necessary vocabulary. The most immediately useful and necessary words from this set are do, re, la, and si, but I will, in the future, assume you know them all.


Solresol words often come in groups of related terms - François Sudre did this intentionally to aid learning.
For instance, look at your first pronouns:

Dore	-	I, me
Domi	-	You
Dofa	-	He, it

These words occur in a sequential order alphabetically (-re, -mi, -fa), because they all hold a similar function.

In order to make a sentence, though, you need a verb.

Faremi

-

to be, exist

This verb is certainly one of the most important words in any language. Familiarize yourself with it, memorize it, and never forget it.

Solresol does not conjugate verbs for different subjects, as many languages do.

Dore faremi.	-	I am.
Domi faremi.	-	You are.
Dofa faremi.	-	He (it) is.

In order to explain a few more ideas, we need a bit more vocabulary:

Domilado	-	To speak, talk, utter
Solresol	-	Solresol specifically, but also language in general
Milasi	-	To love (a person); cherish
Fasifa	-	To want to do something, to intend to do

Solresol sentences (usually) take the structure subject-verb-object (SVO), as English usually is. For example:

Dofa milasi domi.	-	He loves you.
Domi milasi dofa.	-	You love him.

An unaltered verb (as seen in the sentence "Dore faremi") is always in either the present tense (e.g. "I am") or the infinitive (e.g. "to be"), depending on the context. For example:

Dore domilado Solresol.	-	I speak Solresol.
Dore fasifa domilado Solresol.	-	I want to speak Solresol.

Even though the word 'domilado' did not change, its function changed in the sentence from a conjugated verb to an infinitive.

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By using the word 'do' (no, not, etc.), negation in Solresol is very simple. Just add 'do' before the relevant word (usually the verb).

Dore domilado Solresol.	-	I speak Solresol.
Dore do domilado Solresol.	-	I do not speak Solresol.
Dofa do milasi domi.	-	He doesn't love you.
Domi do faremi dore.	-	You are not me.

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That's all for lesson two! Stay tuned for lesson 3, and have fun learning Solresol!

For next time, you need to know all the vocabulary from this lesson and understand this material. If anything doesn't make sense, leave a comment with your question, and I'm sure I'll be able to help.

Vocabulary
Do	-	No, not, neither, nor, etc. (negation)
Re	-	And
Mi	-	Or
Fa	-	To, at
Sol	-	If
La	-	The
Si	-	Yes
Dore	-	I, me
Domi	-	You
Dofa	-	He, it
Faremi	-	to be, exist
Domilado	-	To speak, talk, utter
Solresol	-	Solresol specifically, but also language in general
Milasi	-	To love (a person); cherish
Fasifa	-	To want to do something, to intend to do

When you're ready to go on to Lesson 3, click here.

Learning Solresol, Lesson 1: An introduction

So, you're interested in learning Solresol? Start here.

Solresol has a fascinating history, and I would definitely recommend you research it individually at your leisure to get a fuller understanding (for advice on where to look, see the bottom of this post), but here's a brief introduction:

Solresol is a constructed language, created by François Sudre in 1827. His goal was to create an international language - everyone would learn Solresol as a second language, and the language barrier would effectively be broken, because everyone would share a common tongue. This idea, of an international auxiliary language, is no longer unheard of, but Solresol was the first such language to become fully developed and gain widespread attention. While other languages (Such as Esperanto in theory, or English in practice) seem to be more viable alternatives for this purpose now, Solresol remains a remarkably unique language, deserving of attention - and maybe even a revival. With a dictionary available in English, a  (sidosi.org), and the passion of individuals able to connect via the internet, a revival is indeed in the making - but for that to happen, learning the language must be feasible. I'm not an expert by any means - but nobody is. My hope is that I can share my journey of learning Solresol by teaching you, and we can discover the language together.

Solresol's alphabet is based on the solfège syllables of the Western musical scale: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si. This sets it apart in two fundamental ways: first, it probably has the smallest alphabet in existence; and second, communication can (and should) occur in an incredibly diverse range of mediums. One can communicate in Solresol by singing, playing a musical instrument, speaking the syllables, writing musical notation, painting colors (namely, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet), naming the notes of a scale (e.g. C, D, E, F, G, A, B), writing numbers, tapping numbers morse code style, using the official shorthand (Figure 1), using hand signals (Figure 2), using alternate sign language (Figure 3), or virtually any system that makes use of seven elements.

(Don't be overwhelmed by that list! You don't need to be have perfect pitch, or even be familiar with music at all to learn Solresol. The seven spoken or written syllables are always the most basic form used for learning and almost all communication. Once you understand the language, the variety of possible expression can add versatility and creativity for those who are so inclined.)

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Solresol can embed meaning into almost anything, making it a fascinatingly versatile language. If you're intrigued and want to learn more, go on to lesson two.

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If you want to read more about Solresol's history, I would recommend this PDF:
http://faculty.las.illinois.edu/csandvig/classes/solresol.pdf

If you want to read even more, you should browse Dan Parson's compilation of pretty much every useful piece of information on Solresol on the internet - he's done a great job with it:
http://www.sidosi.org/resources

Back to Blogging

Dosolfasi -

This blog has been quiet for a while, but I'm working on creating some lessons for learning Solresol.  I'd like to actually learn Solresol to the extent of being able to use it to write down thoughts and communicate with others, and I'm sure other people feel the same way.  So expect some actual valuable material in the near future.

Solresol-English Dictionary!

Again, ages since I've posted.
But, good news! The dictionary's done! (where "done" here means that every entry has a rough, best-I-could-do translation of the French, and most of the entries have the French written in too) But still - I'm quite proud of myself. That's 2660 words. You can see it here.

So now I'm in the fun part of this process, where I'm trying the language on and translating and stuff.

Mostly, I'm working with a guy named Travis McKenzie, who is writing a book called Magickless which is being published soon (he's got a blog about his writing here: magickless.blogspot.com). He has an idea of including Solresol in his book as a language of magic and spells, so he asked for some help with translating stuff. It's great practice working with the language and seeing how to phrase things. I think that the only way to really learn a language is through taking in lots of material and using it a lot. Since there isn't really any decent material in Solresol, I'll have to resort to creating it - so short phrases that have a specific purpose are great to work with.

Also - the google group thing for Solresol is doing well (mostly cause Travis is spurring conversations and I finally finished my dictionary (and Matt, another member, is really great too)). But we need more activity, so feel free to stop by or make conversation and whatever :)

(Also, I should point out that through my hours of toiling away at Sudre's dictionary, I became converted to an ardent Sudreist and threw Gajewski out the window. Metaphorically. And really only his vocabulary.)

This post was inspired by Travis McKenzie, who reminded me that I have a blog :)

Dictionaries and Groups

So some more updates:
I'm still working on the dictionary. I have it uploaded (and constantly updated) in a Google documents format, which you can view here.
At the time of this writing, I've got around 1200 words defined, which means starting into 4-syllable words starting with Sol.
I created a Google Group for Solresol, which you can see here.
You can also just look up Solresol in Google Groups; our group is called "Solresol", the URL and email identification of it is "Misolrela" - which means "group" in Solresol.
If you're interested in Solresol in any way, I would really encourage you to join that group. We'd like to collect all the people who are interested (either actively or passively - I really don't care) in one place, so that we can standardize stuff, discuss stuff, share stuff, and generally enjoy some sort of community with each other (however small it may be). Solresol needs a home on the internet, and a blog isn't the place for it to actually thrive. So hopefully that group can serve as that place, at least temporarily, until someone (it'll probably be me, haha [EDIT - Turns out it wasn't!]) can get together a real website.
So that's basically it - Bye :)

A short update on progress...

I realize I haven't posted on here for a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything with Solresol!

Upon compiling all of Gajewski's vocabulary into one file with all the possible Solresol words in it, I realized how much was actually missing. Sudre, however, has defined every SRS word with 4 syllables or fewer, in a fairly complete and logical way (as far as I can tell). Filling in the gaps with Sudre's words and keeping Gajewski's would completely disrupt the logical order of both of their grammars, and thus completely disrupt the learnability and logic of Solresol in general.

As a result of this, I have decided to ignore most of Gajewski's definitions and go with Sudre's complete dictionary. It's simply a matter of translating French, which isn't that hard, and his dictionary is so much more complete it would be silly to do anything else. I think, once I get it all translated, that I will take the liberty of redefining / updating his dictionary to remove what I perceive as redundancies or to include things that are left out. I can only do this once I'm done, of course, and have a complete, searchable database of his language.

On that note, I've been working on translating all of Sudre's dicitonary and putting it into an Excel file for useability's sake. I am currently done with all two- and three-syllable words, and am a little over 1/7 the way through the four syllable's (i.e. I'm done with all the 4-syllable words that start with "Do", and have started into the ones starting with "Re"). This is actually a LOT of words, and I'm quite pleased with my progress.

I feel like it'd be cool to actually publish a book form of this dictionary, along with an introduction and guide to learning and using the language. Of course, really I just want to be able to use it, but it seems I might as well put all this work into something tangible at some point...

Also, on the note of Sudre's definition vs. Gajewski's, the main point of conflict lies in the two-syllable words. Gajewski's words, overall, seem much more logical and practical (Sudre includes words like today, tomorrow, and yesterday, as well as both the masculine "Mister/Sir" and feminine "Mrs./Ma'am" (which can be expressed by one word with masculine or feminine accent), and he leaves out words like "with", which certainly deserve a place in the "little" words. I'm torn. I overall want to go with Gajewski's two-letter definitions, but one word in particular, "Sido" has me torn even more. Gajewski defines it as "Same" (opposite of "Dosi" (other)), whereas Sudre defines it as "How", which is a much more useful word, a word which Gajewski completely neglects. Right now I'm considering going with Gajewski's two-syllable word definitions except for Sido, which seems a bit illogical, but which might actually make the most sense. Of course, for Solresol to be useful as a comunication device, it seems to me that one should be aware of the words with multiple definitions and what they are, in case one runs into someone else who speaks a different "dialect". Which is kind of weird and awful, especially since one of the main ideas of SRS is to eliminate homonyms.
Oh well.

Bye for now, I'll try to get that dictionary up here whenever I get it done, which might not be for quite a long while. But look forward to that, imaginary audience :)

Categorization of Words

So I'm working on memorizing words - thus far a much more challenging task than it is in other languages, which is of course due to the fact that there are only seven syllables (making it feel like memorizing lists of numbers or something).
I find that the most helpful things are (in no particular order):

• Flashcards, flashcards, flashcards. Particularly my group on quizlet (which I am kind of soliciting, but in a really genuine way. I'm finding it extremely helpful), which makes organization easy and has little game things to put a time stress on you.
• Categorization of words - putting words in a category is, I think, one of the most important things (Sudre even designed the four syllable words to fall into a different category depending on their first letter). But even with the smaller words - putting them in the category of "opposites" that have the syllables reversed, or "question words", or "possessives" or something else. It's useful to note, for instance, that all of the two syllable words that start with "re" are possessive words - a categorization that Sudre/Gajewski did for us; or that all the two syllable words that start with "do" are nouns that generally relate to people (except dosi, which means "other"). Anyway it's really helpful, and I'll probably post some lists that help with all that in general.
• Visualisation - by this I mean the shorthand. The shorthand is useful in that although it is only made up of seven signs, each word tends to look unique and different because of their combination - a trait that is less common using only the words or the notes written on a musical staff. For instance, the word "dore" (I, me) is represented by a circle with a vertical line coming from the bottom (or tangent to the right side - but the former is easier to write), and one can easily imagine it to be the upper part of a stickman - a fitting symbol for a representation of theirself. 

So, for my own and possibly your reference, here is a small list of question words (I feel it's useful to see a question mark after it to reinforce the idea) -

[EDIT - these are all from Gajewski, but some of them are the same. Point being, maybe don't memorize from here :) ]

Fado? - What? (used in phrases like, "what is this?")

Midodore? - How much? How many?

Mire? - Who? Which? (I think that mire can also be used as a non-question word - the definition is "that, which, who", which are all pronouns (but pronouns can be questions, of course)) [EDIT - Now I'm less sure that this word can be a question (though it might be allowed)]

Mifa? - Whose?

Fasol? - Why? [EDIT - Sudre: Here, here is]

Also - there seems to be no word for "where", "when", or "how" [EDIT - for Gajewski at least]... I shall assume that the phrases are simply these:

Fado sidomido? - What place? (Where?)

Fado doredo? - What time? (When?)

Lare fado falami? - By what means? (How?)

(The word "Fasol" is an area of discrepancy between Sudre and Gajewski - This is Gajewski's word, as I promised I would favor him. I'm still uncertain and/or a little upset at having to make decisions - I'm not positive that it is right to prefer Gajewski... But Sudre says that this word means "here is" or something to that effect, but the word "mila" (behold, here/there is) already fills that role... I still feel that Sudre must have just made some minor changes like these for the better and we don't have a more recent book of his... augh. Decisions with little to no basis irk me.)