As you may remember, last July and August, an effort was undertaken to submit an application to get Solresol an ISO 639-3 language code. That effort succeeded thanks to the help from a few members of Sidosi, and the application was submitted for review.

Fast forward to today, when the big decision was released. Unfortunately, our application was rejected. Here is the full decision text: wrote:
The request to create the code [sud] for Solresol is rejected. Given a rising number of requests
for languages that have seemed marginal coupled with the fact that the text of the standard fails
to identify criteria for determining whether a particular language would qualify for receiving a
code within 639-3, the RA has been working on defining such criteria within the framework of
the current TC 37 work item for revising standards in the ISO 639 family. There is now a draft
statement on the 639-3 website to establish the criteria for recognition as a “full” language. This
is being used for the first time in 2017 as a basis for decisions to create language codes. This
statement was presented to the Technical Committee 37 / Subcommittee 2 of ISO at their
meetings in June 2017, and they approved its use as part of the decision criteria. With respect to
these criteria, Solresol does not appear to be used in a variety of domains nor for communication
within a community which includes all ages. Therefore the current request for a code [sud] for
Solresol has been rejected.
Now, these new criteria were only created shortly before we submitted the application for Solresol, and as far as I can tell, they were not well-publicized or publicized at all. Here is the new criteria text: wrote:
The current text of ISO 639-3 declares:
It is a goal for this part of ISO 639 to provide an identifier for every distinct human
language that has been documented, whether living or extinct, and whether its primary
modality is spoken, written or signed.
The discussion that follows in the standard enumerates criteria to be used in judging whether
languages are distinct (as opposed to being varieties of the same language).

The panel that the Registration Authority convenes for reviewing and acting on the ISO 639-3
change requests has come to the realization that there is a concept that the standard takes for
granted without making explicit, namely, that the languages in scope for being granted a code
should be full languages. There are many kinds of languages that have distinct names and that
are documented in the literature but which do not seem within scope: avoidance languages,
secret languages, ceremonial languages, play languages, urban languages, youth languages,
special-purpose languages. Such languages are very limited as to domain of use or are
specifically meant to exclude others from communication or are so dynamic and unstable as to
lack widespread norms of use. By contrast, a “full” language is:
  • Used in a variety of domains
  • Used to support communication across all genders and all ages
  • Stable enough to be widely understood across the whole area of the language
The Registration Authority has begun considering these additional criteria when evaluating
whether a requested for a new code should be adopted.

Two kinds of languages that are granted codes in the standard require special consideration:
contact languages and constructed languages. Such languages come into existence relatively
suddenly and are not full languages when they first appear. They are thus not in scope for
coding in ISO 639-3 at first. However, this can change over time. As they are used by successive
generations, they may emerge as full languages as they begin to meet the above three criteria.
As you can see, SIL says that Solresol does not meet the "Used in a variety of domains" and "Used to support communication across all genders and all ages". I'd argue that Solresol isn't the most stable language currently, but SIL's opinion is what ultimately matters. So, what can we do to improve our chances of a successful application in the future? The following answers may be subjective, but it's what I interpret as SIL's meaning.

"Used in a variety of domains"

I think a big part of what limits Solresol's impact is the lack of resources written in Solresol. The resource list can point you to several resources about Solresol, but few of them have even a small snippet of Solresol text. I think this is what the requirements means: we need more Solresol-language resources. Books, short stories, websites, physical or video games, pictures, videos, and recordings are all media that could be based in Solresol. I think having a wide variety of resources represented in Solresol would satisfy this requirement.

"Used to support communication across all genders and all ages"

This one is a bit tougher, but I think it still comes back to the fact that we have no true Solresol speakers. We are all beginning learners of Solresol, and if we want to even attempt to accomplish Solresol's goal of being an international auxiliary language, we need to know the language ourselves. I know good resources for learning Solresol are very limited right now, but as some of us learn more and can create better learning resources, it can help us all improve and spread the knowledge of Solresol. I think having a significant number of people that can actually have a conversation in Solresol would satisfy this requirement.

"Stable enough to be widely understood across the whole area of the language"

This was the reason SIL did not give us for rejecting the application, but I think it is still an important point to bring up. Although we know most of the intricacies of Solresol, there are many questions that still go unanswered by the surviving documents from Sudre's time. For example, the vocabulary is largely unfinished, and of course there are several new words that have been invented since Solresol was created, many of which will need a new Solresol translation. Also, there are some features of the language that are used inconsistently, such as the system for opposites and how to represent accents in various forms of Solresol. Although these improvements may not be strictly needed to get a language code, I think they are an important foundation to lay to foster the growth and spread of Solresol, which would then contribute to the above points. I think getting to the point where we can establish a Solresol language authority (agree on "standard" Solresol) would clearly satisfy this requirement, but again, SIL did not specify this criterion as an issue.


Although it is a sad day that Solresol did not get a language code, it just means we need to work harder for (hopefully?) next year and beyond. This post can serve as a rough to-do list for Solresol, but ultimately the important thing is to start talking about Solresol (and especially in Solresol) more! We have a great group of minds that are obviously interested in this language, so let's push it to the next level!