Solvesol- language based on music scales

Subject: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:08 PM

Anyone know anything about this or use it? A snippet in our paper says you can even hum the Gettysburg Address "or whatever."

Reminds me of an island in some remote place I saw on tv. There are great chasms all over, so the residents have a centuries old custom of whistling their messages to one another. I'd be interested to know more about that, too.

Thanks,

kat

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: Bert
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:13 PM

kat, I believe that is the Canary Islands (seriously).

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: Bert
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:19 PM

here and here

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:23 PM

Thanks, Bert! What a beautiful place!

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: Bert
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 12:27 PM

Of course after the BBC did that documentary on the Spaghetti harvest, one hesitates to mention a whistling language from The Canary Islands.

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 03:08 PM

Naw, it was on SNL first, I swear!!!**BG**

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: GUEST,Liland
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 06:19 PM

It's "Solresol", not "Solvesol". Consists of words of one to five syllables, all formed from combinations of the diatonic syllabic scale "do [or ut, I'm not sure] re mi fa sol la si [I think, not ti]". It was invented by a Frenchman in the early 1800s, won several prestigious prizes, was supported by the French government (I think under Nap III) and Victor Hugo acted as a booster for it. It has some fascinating applications in theory, but appears to be almost impossible to learn well enough to use.

It was promoted as an international language in its heyday, but had already pretty much disappeared from the public eye by the time Volapük came along (1878?). There's a brief article on its survival in Literatura Foiro a few years back, and there are a couple of websites devoted to it.

Liland
Esperantist

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 06:26 PM

Thanks, very much. I had the spelling from a small news item in our paper today. I'll go find one of those websites.

kat

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: GUEST,Liland
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 09:19 PM

Here are the main sites I'm aware of:

Jason Hutchens' Solresol pages;
Stephen Rice's Solresol pages;
Greg Baker's Solresol pages ("Solresol Revival Site" — revival here in a nonreligious sense ;-)
Solresol Unicode standard
Enjoy!
Doredo, or however you say "Ciao!" ;-)

Liland

PS: I don't know if any of these sites go into the implications for truthfulness of this language (it allows you, for example, to sing "yes" to the tune of "no" or vice versa) or into the various other applications (e.g. there was a convention concerning colors; blue=do, green=re, yellow=mi, etc. etc. - I made the particular equivalencies up, but seriously there were rules for such things, so you could also "paint a melody", etc.) Weird, and potentially beautiful if any musical genius had ever actually mastered it.

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Oct 00 - 09:26 PM

kat wrote:

Reminds me of an island in some remote place I saw on tv. There are great chasms all over, so the residents have a centuries old custom of whistling their messages to one another. I'd be interested to know more about that, too.

One such area (not an island) is the Mazatec country of Southern Mexico. My sister's an SIL/WBT translator down there, and she confirms that in some Mazatec communities people can communicate large chunks of real information by whistling from mountaintop to mountaintop. Mazatec is one of the more tonal of the world's languages, which is probably why this works so well for them. Not so sure how that would help in the Canaries, unless the locals have a whole separate system (with the Mazatecs, apparently, it's just whistling the tones at which the morphemes would be spoken if one were speaking them.
I first saw mention of this Mazatec custom in the novel Aztec (Gary Jennings?), and asked my sister because I thought it might just be something he made up for fictional purposes...

Liland

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 12:31 AM

Wow! Thanks very much, again! I will look those over this w/end when I have more time! Really interesting stuff.

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: Haruo
Date: 06 Oct 00 - 01:07 AM

I am curious to know why two of the four sites are in Australia, too; strikes me as an odd sort of thing to be centered down under (especially what with its French origins).
Liland

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: GUEST,katie
Date: 10 Nov 00 - 09:14 PM

Isn't anyone going to construct a site at which I can type my message in and hear it played back, translated into Sol-re-sol?

Subject: RE: Solvesol- language based on music scales
From: MMario
Date: 11 Nov 00 - 07:55 AM