Sarus Pronunciation Guide
written by chluaid
This guide discusses the pronunciation for the characters and words you will encounter in Sarus.
As you may already know, Sarus is based on Solresol; an artificial language invented in the early 1800s by Frenchman Jean Francois Sudré. The original Solresol has had a number of unsuccessful revivals since Sudré’s death and regrettably, most of it is now lost to history.
Sarus is based heavily upon the concept of Solresol. That is, there are 7 “syllables” in the entire vocabulary. These are the 7 major notes of the musical octave:
Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti.
Words in Solresol and Sarus comprise of one, or a combination of several, of these syllables. For example, three syllables Do, Re and Mi when strung together become the Sarus word “doremi”, which translates as ‘the same’.
Pronunciation
The major obstruction with Sudré’s Solresol was that words needed to be separated by gaps. Therefore, when spoken or played on a musical instrument, any phrase was a stop-start affair, sounding very disjointed. This also made the language very slow, making it cumbersome and inefficient as a language for everyday communication.
As you'll soon see, Sarus has been developed with a pronunciation system similar to certain other languages by using something similar to syllable stress.
In Sarus, the first syllable of every word (called the Prime syllable) is stressed slightly. As well as this, the prime syllable is also pronounced a little differently to other syllables in the same word. The combination of these two rules make the start of each word easily recognisable, so that by using this method, words may be spoken without gaps separating them.
Prime syllable
Here is the pronunciation key for the seven syllables when used as a word’s first syllable:
Do – pronounced ‘doe’ (yes.. a deer)
Re – pronounced ‘ray’
Mi – pronounced ‘mee’
Fa – pronounced ‘faa’
So – pronounced ‘so’
La – pronounced ‘laa’
Ti – pronounced ‘tee’
In any Sarus word, the prime syllable is always pronounced like those above.
Latter syllables
As you’ve seen, the prime syllable is pronounced a certain way. All other syllables in the word, called Latter Syllables are pronounced differently.
All latter syllables are pronounced with their vowels replaced by an ‘uh’ sound. In phonetics, this sound is called ‘schwa’ and is indicated by the character: ə
Therefore, all latter syllables in a word are pronounced as follows:
do – pronounced ‘də’
re – pronounced ‘rə’
mi – pronounced ‘mə’
fa – pronounced ‘fə’
so – pronounced ‘sə’
la – pronounced ‘lə’
ti – pronounced ‘tə’
Remember that the schwa character ‘ə’ is pronounced ‘uh’.
Prime and Latter combined
As you’ve seen, the prime syllable is pronounced differently to the latter syllables in a Sarus word.
A Sarus word in its entirety is made up of anywhere from one to 5 or even 6 syllables. For example, the word faedmir means ‘almost’ and consists of the syllables:
Fa, Do, Mi, Re.
Fa is the prime, and do mi re are the latters. This word is thus pronounced as follows:
Fadəmərə (faa-duh-muh-ruh)
When spoken, the ‘ə’ of the final syllable may be dropped. Not only does this streamline the word, but it also makes the ending recognisable. So now we have:
Fadəmər (fa-duh-mur)
The problem of Re
The syllable ‘Re’ can become difficult to pronounce when it appears twice in a row. In a sentence that contains lots of ‘re’ syllables, the speaker can sound a little like an old car trying to start on a cold morning. For example the question “Am I coming?” translates as follows:
Rerə Dorə Rerədə
To make this easier, a double ‘re’ makes use of the consonant ‘k’. The second of the two is changed to ‘kə’, so that 'Rerə' becomes ‘Rekə’. Therefore, the above question “Am I coming?” is much easier pronounced:
Rekə Dorə Rekəde
But wait.. there’s still a double ‘re’ in there. Can you see it?
Rekə Dorə Rekəde
When you say the sentence aloud, the latter ‘rə’ in Dorə is followed closely by the prime Re in Rekədə. To combat this, whenever necessary, you can use the ‘k’ consonant for the problem ‘re’. There’s a catch though.. the ‘k’ consonant must NEVER be used on a prime syllable. With this change and the final syllables dropped, the sentence is pronounced like so:
Rek Dok Rekəd
Here are some more examples:
Dore Reremi Relafa
-Dok rekəm reləf
(I have advantage)
Dofa ti sorere
-dof ti sorək
(He is sick)
Sosofa dore remitire
-sosəf dok remətər
(Give me permission)
Note that the use of 'k' is for pronunciation purposes. When writing the abbreviated form of Sarus words, for example "ssf dr rmtr" (give me permission) the double 'r' remains. When writing, there is no k in abbreviated Sarus.
Spelling Sarus words
You’ll notice throughout these lessons that the Sarus words contain various combinations of vowels amongst the consonant syllables.
It’s important to note that these vowels are inconsequential to the meaning! Remember that the language is based on the solfege syllables D R M F S L T, and so they alone are the important parts of the word, and essential for correct translation.
Therefore, “remitur” means the same as raemytir, romutar or even rhymethehour. Each of those words contain the exact same Sarus syllables in the same order: RMTR. The vowels in a word are merely padding.
It’s most important that you get the Sarus syllables correct, because this is the skeleton of the word, which translates to colour, melody and hand signals, as you'll see in a later lesson. |