The proper alphabet principle

Abstract One of the notions crucial to understanding early methods of phonetic transcription is the ‘Proper Alphabet Principle’: the idea that each human language should have its own distinct writing system. Having a distinct orthography was taken to be a defining characteristic of the three holy languages (Hebrew, Greek and Latin), and this also applied in the case of ‘exotic’ languages ranging from Arabic to Chinese. The principle further assumes that the relation between alphabet and language is biunique: each language has one and only one proper alphabet, and vice versa. My purpose is to examine how this principle has permeated ideas about writing in the western tradition. I will start by examining the theory and practice of phonetic transcription in the seventeenth century, both in the context of philosophical language schemes and early comparative philology, and then position these developments within the larger historical context, leading to the establishment of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the nineteenth century. The fundamental principle of the IPA—that it is independent of any specific language—is the precise complement of the Proper Alphabet Principle. The two principles turn out to interplay in complex ways in the development of ideas about phonetic transcription.