Sarus (artificial language)

Sarus is an artificial language created by animator Adam Phillips.

Construction

Sarus consists of syllables which, when communicated, consist of symbols, tones, numbers, colors, gestures, or glyphs. Its concept is based on Solresol, an artificial language developed in France early in the 19th Century.

Sarus primarily uses the phonetic or abbreviated representation of the tonal syllables. The tones exist as the solfege set of Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, and Ti (equivalent to musical notes C – D – E – F – G – A – B). In Sarus, these are abbreviated to d, r, m, f, s, l, t.

Words in Sarus consist of a series of uninterrupted syllables, for example: "mls" (music), "sds" (number) "lfmf" (mountains). A word may also be expressed as a whole heptagonal glyph, called "septaglyphs". Alternative syllable forms are numbers 1-7 and the seven colours of the spectrum, R - O - Y - G - B - I - V. However any set of seven unique characters, including hand signals (a feature of 19th Century Solresol), may be used to represent the individual syllables.

Triple syllables are not used, e.g. ddd, rrr, mmm, etc. The 336 3-syllable words of Sarus can often be used as root words for 4 and 5 syllable words. Plurals make use of this by placing a consecutive syllable at the end of a 3-syllable noun to make the plural, for example "mfl" (hill); "mflt" (hills), "lsd" (girl) "lsdr" (girls). Counting 3, 4 and some 5 syllable words, Sarus consists of around 1300 words, corresponding to those most used in English.

Its earliest version was called B525. In the language itself, the numbers 525 represent the syllables So Re So, written "srs" (language). This is a legacy of the 19th Century SolReSol, which also translated as "language" and is likewise from where the name "Sarus" is derived. Sarus is also called srf srs - "Soryf Sorys" (shadow tongue).

Origin

Sarus was created as a language for the fictional race called the YuYu, a mysterious group of interdimensional travellers in the Brackenwood Universe. Yuyus can speak Sarus or communicate by flashing their eyes in different colors, as they also are a form of Sarus, representing letters.

Application

Phillips has stated he will use Sarus to insert hidden messages into his animations. In his animation Little Foot, Phillips integrated 20 hidden messages and secrets, many of them involving Sarus, and challenged viewers to find them.

External links

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