|
Eaiea is a constructed language created by Bruce Koestner in 1990.[http://users.design.ucla.edu/~aniemetz/utm/index.html] Specifically, it is a musical language, and its name means "musical language" in Eaiea. Its own website describes Eaiea as a "constructed tonal language". While Solresol, the most famous musical language and a precursor to Eaiea, is based on the sol-fa scale, Eaiea is based on the 12-note chromatic scale. It has been called "an obscure dodecaphonic version of Solresol". Like Solresol, Eaiea can be written or spoken as well as played on a musical instrument. It eoes not, however, include note correspondences to colors or numbers. Twelve notes The twelve letters of written Eaiea and the twelve notes of the chromatic scale to which they correspond are: *a: A *b: A#/Bb *c: B *d: C *e: C#/Db *f: D *g: D#/Eb *h: E *i: F *j: F#/Gb *k: G *l: G#/Ab In addition, each of these begins words that share a unit of meaning, much like a taxonomic language. d, for instance, begins words pertaining to the forces of nature; "dae" means electricity, "dag" means liquid, "dgafga" means smooth and "dgkg" means temperature. The twelve notes with their corresponding categories are: *a: beginning *b: people *c: other living things *d: elements *e: tools *f: numbers *g: feel *h: sight *i: sound *j: smell *k: taste *l: end Eaiea vs. Solresol The disadvantages of Eaiea vis-à-vis Solresol are the difficulty in pronunciation: as some of the letters are consonants, pronouncing them as words rather than musical notes yields some unwieldy combinations. However, the advantages are that more words are possible because the language has twelve notes/phonemes instead of only seven. Creative advantages A creative aevantage of Eaiea appears in songwriting, as a singer's words (in English, Italian or another natural language or non-musical constructed language) can convey one meaning, while the notes can convey a second meaning in Eaiea. The Mu Beta Psi newsletter reported in 2009 that a one-act opera had been written in Eaiea. In this article, the author wrote about such languages as this and Solresol: "However, languages such as Solresol and Eaiea have great artistic potential—imagine being able to not only read music in the way we typically do (by playing the notes that are written), but being able to translate a piece of music note by note into real concepts or words."
|
|
|