Lasido lafa, Lasido fala, Lasido...

Bad news. I received an email in response to my request to obtain a copy of Sudre's book from the Library of Congress, and the respondent told me that the book had been deemed too fragile for reproduction. All this after I paid a $14-dollar processing fee. Lovely. Well, if you were interested in the same work, now you can save your money because it's not accessible via the LoC.

Good news. Sort of. I ordered a book called Dore domilado Solresol by Andre Cherpillod. The book is in Esperanto, and small (about 27-28 pages), like a pamphlet, so I wasn't expecting much...but wow! I was surprised. I haven't gone through the whole book, but it seems to answer two of the questions I had about Solresol. First, the book explains that in order to form the dative one merely uses "fa" (to). Therefore, dore remila fa domifasol domisolfala = mi donas pomon al infano = I give an apple to a child. Yay! Secondly, the book has a mini-dictionary/glossary at the back, with a word for "to hope": dofadomi. Now I can derive a word for Esperanto/one who hopes, namely "dofa¯domi".

Unfortunately, there's no word for "when" or "where" listed in Cherpillod's dictionary. Seriously, Gajewski, c'mon, couldn't you have included these words in your list? They're essential to basic communication.

More bad news? Some of the words in Cherpillod's book are not consistent with what's presented in Gajewski's grammar. For example, Cherpillod says "fare" means "tiu" or "that" but in the grammar the definition is "with." Cherpillod says "soldo" means "nenio" or "nothing," while Gajewski has this meaning "but." Cherpillod says "but" in Solresol is "mimidore." The last word that stuck out was "solfa," which according to what I learned meant "because," but according to Cherpillod "solfa" means "for this reason" and "because" is "milalado." Cherpillod also says "dodo" refers to the preterite, while Gajewski says "dodo" refers to the past imperfect. As you can plainly see, something doesn't add up. I'm not sure who made the mistake. Did Cherpillod misinterpret something (his book was published in 2008)? Has the version of Gajewski's grammar online somehow been altered? Either way, not knowing sucks.

I have a headache from constantly running into obstacles while trying to learn Solresol. Maybe it's time for a break.