User:Programmer16/Sandbox/Solresol

This page contains draft Wikitext for the English Solresol article, contained within a comment to avoid inclusion in content categories.

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Solresol is an artificial language devised by François Sudre, beginning in 1827. Sudre's wife posthumously published his major book on it, Langue musicale universelle, in 1866, though he had already been publicizing it for many years before his death. Solresol enjoyed a brief spell of popularity, reaching its pinnacle with Boleslas Gajewski's 1902 posthumous publication of Grammaire du Solresol.

Phonology
Solresol words are made up of from one to five syllables or notes. Each of these may be one of only seven basic phonemes, which may in turn be accented or lengthened. There is another phoneme, silence, which is used to separate words: words cannot be run together as they are in English.

The phonemes can be represented in a number of different ways – as the seven musical notes in an octave, as spoken syllables (based on solfège, a way of identifying musical notes), with the seven colours of the rainbow, symbols, hand gestures etc. Thus, theoretically Solresol communication can be done through speaking, singing, flags of different color – even painting.

Vocabulary
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. The last couple syllables may be arbitrary, to capture distinctions such as "apple" vs "pear" which do not fit simple categories.

Feminine words are formed by accenting the last vowel, and plurals by geminating the last consonant.

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:

* Feminine versions are formed by accenting the last vowel.

Grammar
Apart from stress and length, solresol words are not inflected. Word order is also rather strict.

Solresol marks feminine gender and plural number, by stressing or lengthening the last syllable a word:


 * resimire brother, resimiré sister
 * resimiree brothers, resimiréé sisters

This only affects the first word in a noun phrase. That is, it only affects a noun when the noun is alone, as above; any determiner ('the', 'my', etc.) will take the gender or number marking instead:


 * redo resimire my brother, redó resimire my sister
 * redoo resimire my brothers, redóó resimire my sisters

Parts of speech are derived from verbs by lengthening the vowel one of the syllables: abstract noun (1st vowel), agent/doer (2nd vowel), adjective (penultimate vowel), adverb (last vowel). For example,


 * midofa to prefer, miidofa preference, midoofa preferable, midofaa preferably
 * resolmila to continue, reesolmila continuation, resoolmila one who continues, resolmiila continual, resolmilaa continually

Questions are formed by inverted subject and verb.

The various tense-and-mood particles are the double syllables, as given in vocabulary above. In addition, passive verbs are formed with faremi between this particle and the verb. The subjunctive is formed with mire before the pronoun. The negative do only appears once in the clause, before the word it negates.

The word fasi before a noun or adjective is augmentative; after it is superlative. Sifa is the opposite (diminutive):


 * fala good, fasi fala very good, fala fasi excellent, the best; sifa fala okay, fala sifa not very good (and similarly with lafa bad)
 * sisire wind, fasi sisire gale, sisire fasi cyclone; sifa sisire breeze, sisire sifa movement of air

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 recognize)
 * it presents no pronunciation difficulties
 * very simple but effective system to differentiate the function of the words in the sentences

The teaching of sign languages to the deaf and mute was forbidden between 1880 and 1991 in France, contributing to Solresol's descent into obscurity. After a few years of popularity, it faded into obscurity in the face of more successful languages such as Volapük and Esperanto. Despite this, there is still a small community of Solresol enthusiasts scattered across the world, better able to communicate with one another now than before the advent of the Internet.