Lesson 4: Adjectives and Adverbs

This is part of a series of posts on learning Solresol. To start at Lesson 1, click here.

Over the last two lessons, you have learned about verbs and nouns in Solresol - in this lesson you will learn how to modify verbs and nouns with adverbs and adjectives.

Adjectives are formed much like nouns - namely, by emphasizing a specific syllable in a base word. To form an adjective from another word, you emphasize the second-to-last (penultimate) syllable.

Examples:

Milasi	-	To love (a person)
Milâsi	-	Loving (adj.)
Dosido	-	To help
Dosîdo	-	Helpful
Resolsido	-	To need
Resolsîdo	-	Needy

Adjectives always come after the noun they describe:

Ladosol dosîdo	-	Helpful book
Sôlsisol milâsi	-	Loving smile
Misolredo resolsîdo	-	Needy person

Misolredo	-	Person, a being, individual, human
Laremisi	-	To turn red, redden, blush
Laremila	-	To turn blue
Solsire	-	To be happy
Resisol	-	To be sad, sadden
Dofasolmi	-	To become beautiful, make oneself beautiful

Note that laremisi and laremila share a common beginning 'root', as they are both colours.

Note that solsire and resisol have opposite meanings and are 'mirror images' of each other. Many words in Solresol follow this pattern - you will see many more examples of this in later lessons.

When you learn a new word in Solresol, it's a good idea to think through all of its various forms. For example: 

Laremisi means to turn red, lâremisi means the abstract noun 'red', and laremîsi means 'red', the adjective. Laremila - 'to turn blue', functions exactly the same way. 

Solsire means 'to be happy', sôlsire means 'happiness', solsîre means 'happy'. 

Resisol means 'to be sad', rêsisol means 'sadness', resîsol means 'sad'. 

Dofasolmi means 'to become beautiful', dôfasolmi means 'beauty', dofasôlmi means 'beautiful'.

Adjectives are always used to describe nouns, even if they aren't next to the noun in the sentence:

La fadofasol faremi laremîsi.	-	The tree is red.
Dore faremi solsîre.	-	I am happy.
Domi faremi dofasôlmi.	-	You are beautiful.

(Note that the second sentence, while grammatically correct, is not the most efficient way to express the idea. Because solsire is a verb, one can simply say, "Dore solsire," which means, "I am happy.")

Adjectives can be formed from nouns too:

Fadofasol - tree; fadofâsol - tree-like.
Misolrela - person, individual; misolrêla - personal, individual (adj.)
Solresol - Solresol, language; solrêsol - Solresol (used as an adjective, e.g. "A Solresol word"); linguistic

Because one may add an accent to any word in Solresol, many words can be difficult to concisely translate into English. As a general rule, though: The adjective form of a verb embodies the characteristics of something/someone who does the verb often or very well; on a noun, it typically means 'like the noun'. For example, solsisol means 'to smile'; in the phrase la misolredo solsîsol, it is understood that the person smiles often, or is currently smiling, or that his/her most notable characteristic is his/her smile.

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Adverbs are formed by stressing the final syllable. Adverbs modify verbs and adjectives - they are used to describe how something is done.

Milasi	-	Love (for a person)
Milasî	-	Lovingly
Dosido	-	Help
Dosidô	-	Helpfully
Solsire	-	To be happy
Solsirê	-	Happily

Adverbs, like adjectives, should generally come after the verb they modify:

Dofa solsisol solsirê.	-	He smiles happily.
Dore solmila resisôl.	-	I remember sadly.

Adverbs can also be made from nouns:

Domi dosolfami fadofasôl.

-

You stand like a tree.

Dosolfami

-

To stand, stand up, rise, get up

(dosolfâmi - standing, lifted, raised, on foot)

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More Vocabulary:

Solsido	-	Run
Fasido	-	Walk
Fasimire	-	Speed, haste, velocity; (fast, quickly)
Remisifa	-	Dally, dawdle, linger; (slow, slowly)

With this, I leave you some sentences to practice with. As always, I encourage you to actually write down your responses, to learn more quickly. I also encourage you to experiment with making other sentences with what you know! And if you don't understand anything, just ask!


Translate to English:

Dore solsido fasimirê.
Domi ladofa remisifâ.
La fadofasol laremîsi faremi dofasôlmi.
Dofa solmila mire dore faremi resîsol.

Translate to Solresol:

The happy person runs to the tree.
You speak beautifully.
He learns quickly.
I love to walk slowly.
I want to be a beautiful person.

That book is red, and this book is blue.
He has a beautiful sadness.

---

Answers:

I run quickly.

You read slowly.

The red tree is beautiful.

He remembers that I am sad.

La misolredo solsîre solsido fa la fadofasol.
Domi domilado dofasolmî.
Dofa sidosi fasimirê.
Dore milasol fasido remisifâ.
Dore fasifa faremi misolredo dofasolmî.

Fare fadosol faremi laremîsi, re fami fadosol faremi laremîla.

Dofa famisol rêsisol dofasôlmi.

Learning Solresol, Lesson 3: Nouns

This is part of a series of lessons for learning Solresol. To start at lesson 1, click here.

In this lesson, we will learn how nouns are formed in Solresol, in addition to some new vocabulary.

First, to review, try to translate these sentences into English. Try to do it completely from memory, but if you can't remember a word, check your own notes or the previous lesson - check the answers when you're completely done. I encourage you to actually write down your responses; it will really help you learn.

Sidosi

-

To learn

Domi milasi dore.

Dofa do domilado Solresol.

Domi re dore fasifa sidosi Solresol.

Dofa do milasi domi.

Dore faremi.

Dofa sidosi domilado Solresol.

---

Answers:

You love me.

He does not speak Solresol.

You and I want to learn Solresol.

He doesn't love you.

I am.

He learns to speak Solresol.

How did you do? If you had to go back and look up some words, that's okay - but memorization is very important to learning Solresol, so keep working on the vocabulary. There will be new vocabulary every lesson, so you'll want to keep up.

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In Solresol, the same word is used for the verb, noun, adjective, and adverb - the various forms are distinguished by emphasizing specific syllables.

To form nouns, you accent the first syllable:

Domilado	-	To speak
Dômilado	-	Speech
Faremi	-	To be, exist
Fâremi	-	Existence, being
Milasi	-	To love (a person)
Mîlasi	-	Love (n) (for a person)

The accent over the letter indicates that you should emphasize that syllable - Sudre uses the term rinforzando, which is a sudden increase of emphasis, or another word for the musical term sforzando.

The notation for said accents isn't really set in stone - I like to use the accents I used above because they resemble an accent in music, but using 'normal' accents is also a popular choice (dó, ré, mí, fá, sól, lá, sí). You will occasionally see the accented syllable written in all caps (DOmilado), but try to only use that if there is no other option, because, frankly, it looks terrible.


In order to further the cause of this lesson, you will need some new vocabulary. I suggest you focus on each word carefully, and write them all down.

Redo	-	My, mine
Remi	-	Your, yours
Refa	-	His, its
Fare	-	That, that one
Fami	-	This, this one

These first five words are usually used to label nouns - they always come before the noun they label (redo mîlasi - my love). All these words, however, can also be used as nouns themselves (fare faremi redo - that is mine).

Note that the possessive pronouns are related to the corresponding subject pronouns:

Dore - I, me		Redo - My, mine
Domi - you		Remi - your, yours
Dofa - he, it		Refa - his, its

Also note that fare and fami are next to each other alphabetically, because they are related words.

Famisol	-	Have, possess, own
Milasol	-	Love (for things)
Solsisol	-	Smile, grin
Ladofa	-	Read
Remila	-	Give
Dosido	-	Help, aid, assist
Solmila	-	Remember, recollect
Resolsido	-	Need, require

These seven words are all verbs - but they can become nouns by accenting the first syllable: Solsisol - to smile; La sôlsisol - the smile. In the same way: la fâmisol - the possession, the thing owned; la mîlasol - the love (for a thing); la lâdofa - the reading, the read; la rêmila - the gift or present; la dôsido - the assistance, help, or aid; la sôlmila - the memory, the recollection; la rêsolsido - the need, the necessity.

Note the difference between milasi and milasol. Milasi is used to say you love a person; Milasol is used to talk of loving objects, animals, and activities. One may use milasi with poetic license in other contexts, but on a literal level it should only be used for people (or other sentient lifeforms, or fictional anthropomorphized creatures of some other nature).

Ladosol	-	Book (n.)
Fadofasol	-	Tree

These last two words, ladosol and fadofasol, are implicitly nouns - so they don't need the initial accent to be used that way.

Notice that ladofa - to read, and ladosol - book, are next to each other alphabetically, because they are related words.

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The best way to learn is through examples and practice (citation needed). So, some examples:

Fare faremi redo ladosol.	-	That is my book.
Dore remila la rêmila fa domi.	-	I give the gift to you.
Dore milasol remi sôlsisol.	-	I love your smile.
Dofa fasifa ladofa fami ladosol.	-	He wants to read this book.
Fami faremi remi.	-	This is yours.

Now that you see how these words work in sentences, try to translate some on your own. As always, try to do as much as you can without checking, and do actually write down what you come up with. This is as much a test of vocabulary as it is of grammar, so be familiar with the new words from this lesson before doing the exercises (It's not really a test, though, don't worry).

Translate these into English:

Dofa milasol fare ladosol.
Domi famisol redo mîlasi.
Fare do faremi Solresol.
Dore resolsido dôsido!
Dofa famisol remi sôlsisol.
Domi resolsido solsisol.

And these into Solresol:

He has a tree. [Solresol doesn't have a word for 'a' or 'an' - just leave it out.]
You have my book!
That is mine.
This book is yours.
I don't remember his smile.
He has your gift.
You remember his love.

---

Answers:

English Translations:

He loves that book.
You have my love.
That is not Solresol.
I need help!
He has your smile.
You need to smile.

Solresol Translations:

Dofa famisol fadofasol.
Domi famisol redo ladosol!
Fare faremi redo.
Fami ladosol faremi remi.
Dore do solmila refa sôlsisol.
Dofa famisol remi rêmila.
Domi solmila refa mîlasi. [Using mîlasol here wouldn't necessarily be wrong, but it would imply that his love is for something else, such as an activity or object.]

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That's all for this lesson! Be sure you have all the vocab so far memorized, and that you understand everything from this lesson. If anything is unclear to you, feel free to leave a comment with your question.

To go on to the next segment of this series, click here.

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 :)

Solresol

Solresol (Langue Musicale Universelle) is a language created by François Sudre in the mid-nineteenth century. It is an "a priori" language, meaning that it's vocabulary is not based on any existing languages - Solresol is actually based on the musical scale.

Every word in Solresol is composed from only seven syllables (the musical scale) - Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, and Si. In the current musical scale, "So" is used instead of "Sol", and "Ti" in lieu of "Si" - at the time that Solresol was created, the latter were used, so it is appropriate to continue their use when using Solresol.
I discovered Solresol around a year ago, and I recently decided to explore it deeper. This blog is my way of organizing my thoughts and presenting my ideas and input to the (virtually nonexistant [EDIT - not anymore! Check more recent posts]) online Solresol community (if they happen to find me... perhaps I shall need to find them).

There is actually very little information around on Solresol, and much of it (as far as I'm aware) has only turned up recently at the hard work of dedicated people.
[EDIT - This next paragraph is also not true anymore]
The primary source that I will use is Boleslas Gajewski's grammar of Solresol, published in 1902 (after Sudre had died). I am using this because: 1. It seems to be the most prevalent online source for most other people that are using Solresol; 2. It is the most accessible to me (an English speaker); and 3. I don't believe that Gajewski would have intentionally changed major facets of the language, so any discrepancies I am assuming are changes that Sudre made but which we do not have in publication (most of Sudre's work, as far as I know, is missing).
This work is available at these links (I provide several in the off chance that some of them stop working (as far as I can tell they are all the same)) :

http://mozai.com/writing/not_mine/solresol/sorsoeng.htm

https://webspace.utexas.edu/bighamds/LIN312/Files/SolReSol.pdf

http://www.ifost.org.au/~gregb/solresol/sorsoeng.htm

The second source I will be using is Sudre's book on Solresol, Langue Musicale Universelle [EDIT - again, not true anymore. This is really my main (only) source for vocabulary now]. I am using this second for many of the reasons provided above - primarily because it is less accessible. It only appeared online relatively recently (sometime in late 2009), and it is A. in French (which, alas, I do not speak); B. In a PDF format that doesn't allow one to search for words; C. The dictionary does not spell out words, it simply provides a picture of a musical staff with the notes on it, rendering it nigh impossible to read and reference; and D. it's just really long and the scanned pages are rather difficult to read. So basically it's just really inconvenient.  - However! It does contain some valuable information that I can decipher with motivation and the help of Google Translate, so it is an indispensible reference. The problem is that it is sometimes contradictory to Gajewski, so I had to create an order of priority, and Gajewski was just so much easier and more prevalent. 

The PDF book can be found here:

http://www.ifost.org.au/~gregb/solresol/sudre-book.pdf

There are also several dictionaries and references which are definitely worth linking to and which I will certainly use:

http://www.datapacrat.com/True/LANG/SOLRESOL/DICTIONA.HTM
(Note in the above the use of "Ti" instead of "Si" - I will of course use the latter, but it's worth mentioning that this dictionary is slightly less practical)

http://www.ifost.org.au/~gregb/solresol/sorsolex.htm
(The weakness in the above is that it is in English alphabetical order, not Solresol alphabetical order)

http://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-solresol/en/art-solresol/
(This is a site on the number system)

http://quizlet.com/group/56348/
(The above is a flashcard group that I created to help with learning Solresol - it is in progress, but I would encourage anyone interested to check it out; vocabulary in this language can be hard to process, and the flashcards certainly help. (note also that there is a checkbox to ignore stuff in parentheses - they are there to help the learner; it is unreasonable to have to type it all))

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/solresol.htm
(The above is helpful information on the various methods of expressing Solresol, including the shortahand)

Personally, I feel that from what I know of Solresol, it is an awkward language to speak - there are rules of emphasis that are difficult to grasp and employ (questions that arise include, "How do I not put stress on any of the syllables??"), and the repitition tends to make it run together. It's not impossible to do, but it seems more inconvenient (also, the chances of meeting someone who understands (or even knows about it) are very slim). For those reasons I feel that Solresol should be, primarily, a written language. It is one opinion, of course, but it makes sense. There is a shorthand that can be used to write it which makes it look less repetitive, and it is easy to mark accents while writing. I am learning Solresol for mostly personal reasons; I see it as more of a "secret code" with which I can write things to myself without others understanding than as a language with which I will frequently communicate with others. I am, of course, open to using it as a communication tool, but I feel that it is so obscure that such incidences (even on the internet) will be uncommon. [EDIT - actually, it turns out communication might be easier than I though :) ]

Solresol is unique in its ability to be expressed through a large variety of means - spoken words, music (both written and played), colors (red through indigo and violet (seven total)), numbers, written words (and abbreviations), and the written shorthand. I admire this versatility, and it is one of the things that attracted me. It seems the most useful language if one were to frequently need to communicate in secret code (which I secretly wish I did). Solresol just offers a unique opportunity to think about language in a different way, and I'd like to delve in deeper.

So there it is. My reason for creating this blog is just to express my ideas more clearly to a hopefully not too nonexistant audience, but at least to myself. I also realize that there are certainly some words and/or phrases that are just missing in Solresol, and need to be created. I plan on creating some for my use and (hopefully) for others as well, which can't happen if I don't put it on the internet somewhere.

Well that's all -
Bye :)