From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Sat Aug 18 2001 - 10:40:45 MDT
Imagine for a moment a universal language, translatable to colour, melody,
writing, touch, hand signals, and endless strings of numbers. Imagine now that
this language was taught from birth to be second nature to every speaker, no
matter what their primary language. The world would become saturated with
hidden meanings.
[…]
Yet Solresol is not entirely dead. There are about a dozen enthusiasts
scattered across the world: most notably two Australian cryptographers --- Greg
Baker and Jason Hutchens --- who discovered the language independently of each
other; the Alaskan researcher Stephen Rice; California musicologist David
Whitwell; and Oregon physician John Schilke. Each has worked to preserve the
history of this bizarrely charming language,often while completely unaware that
any other Solresolists were even out there.
The revival looks like it may even be gaining momentum. Greg Baker has
registered the domainname of solresol.org.au as a future base of operations, and
Jason Hutchens has floated the idea of computer programs which will convert
Solresol writings into files that could be exchanged between musician-speakers
worldwide. Rice has begun to make some refinements in the language which, when
completed, will be the first step forward in Solresol's development since
Gajewski's 1904 text.
One enigmatic trace did turn up before the current revival: years ago, someone
in the computer industry quietly inserted the seven letters of the Solresol
alphabet in the Unicode 16-character set. "Here was a language that had very
little written record," Greg Baker muses, "now being regarded by the computer
industry as an important international language, on par with Thai, Tamil or
English.
RESOURCES
RECOMMENDED READING
*Banvard's Folly* (Picador, Autumn 2001) Paul Collins
*La Telephonie and the Universal Musical Language* David Whitwell contact: <
david.whitwell@csun.edu > to buy this photocopied booklet
RECOMMENDED SURFING
< http://www.ptialaska.net/~srice/solresol/intro.htm >
Stephen Rice's exhaustive exploration of Solresol
< http://www.amristar.com.au/~hutch/solresol/ >
Another site devoted to Solresol
< http://groups.yahoo.com/group/auxlang/messages >
Auxlang (auxiliary language) archives
----------------------
>Imagine for a moment a universal language, translatable to colour, melody,
>writing, touch, hand signals, and endless strings of numbers.
Um, well that would be ANY language. Although encoding text into color and
melody is a touch harder, communicating via writing (duh), touch, hand
signals, and numbers is the norm.
This email is, on one level, encoded in writing. On another level, it's
encoded as a string of numbers. On another, it's a pattern of light and
dark on a screen, and if it's transmitted over a modem, it's a series of
tones. The text could easily be translated into sign language or braille,
which could be transmitted via touch.
Dave Palmer
--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com >
Alternate: < terry_colvin@hotmail.com >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage *
TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting (USMTF) Program
------------
Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List
TLCB Web Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org >[Vietnam veterans,
Allies, and CIA/NSA are welcome]
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