Abstract
The absolute necessity of phonetic alphabets is now almost universally recognised by practical teachers and also by scientific philologist. All the objections that prejudice and irrational conservatism have been able to devise have been successfully met by the phonetic alphabet.
Introduction
In the languages spoken all over the world, the letters in the orthography do not always have an exact correspondece with the speech sound in the pronounciation of words. This fact does not matter to native speakers of a particular language, but in case of foreigners who do not learn pronounciation along with phonetic symbols and depend only on their teachers, wrong pronounciation will go along with them during entire study. Languages whose orthography does not tell much about sounds for example English, or whose many letters are silent like French, phonetic conversion is difficult not only for learners but also for linguists. As in the word scissors, (sc) stands for s, the double (ss) stands for z, but the letter r is silent in British English.
Necessity of phonetic alphabet
It is very neccessory to the one who speaks any of the language, to have the knowledge of use of phonetic alphabet in the language, so others can understand his words. The difficulty of arriving at any agreement is the multiplicity of possible systems. Any system, however clumsy and arbitary, which clears away only a portion of the
irregularities of the existing spelling, is an improvement on it. Any one, for instance, if he likes, can leave the silent w in such words as write, and make night into nite, thus getting rid of a large number of irregularities at one stroke. In fact, given a hundred human beings of average inteligence level who can read or write, it would be perfectly easy to turn out a lot of different systems of spelling, all of them more or less an improvement on the existing one. It was until lately the state of things –every man did what was right in his own opinion. But after the work of great linguists on a phonetic alphabet, practically everything has been changed, especially within the last ten years.
It is now possible from an examination of these various systems to deduce certain general principles, by which all reform must be guided. If there were no such principles, the problem would be a hopeless one. Nothing can be done without unanimity, and until the majority of the community is convinced of the superiority of some one system, unanimity is impossible.
No one is qualified to give an opinion on spelling reform that has not studied these general principles, and has at least an elementary knowledge of the formation of the sounds of the English language and their relation to one another.
Necessity of phonetic alphabet in different languages
An important result of a return to the Roman values of the letters would be the restoration of the original harmony of the English with the continental values of the letters, which would much facilitate the acquisition of English by foreigners. At present, English people and foreigners have to learn each other’s languages almost entirely by eye, unless thoroughly taught by a native, consequently are utterly at a loss when brought face to face with the spoken language – in fact, they have to learn the same language twice over.
Thus when a German sees the English written word right he easily associates it with his own recht, as also the English name with the German name, but when he hears the genuine rait and neim, he is thrown completely off the scent. Conversely when an Englishman comes cross the German knie for the first time, he at once thinks of his own knee, and naturally drops the k in the German word as well as in the English: if he were used to see the English word spelt nii, he would never think of dropping the k in German. It will surely be the topic of argument by the advocates of historical spelling that the silent letter in right and knee are really valuable helps in acquiring the language.
It is necessary, the orthographies of most of the continental languages require reform as well as English; French, especially, most urgently requires a thorough change. Actually there is no reason why foreigners should not learn French on a phonetic system, leaving the present French spelling to be acquired afterwards, even if the French themselves do not inaugurate a reform.
Commonest words in our vocabulary we have whole classes of words like machine, marine, oblique, antique in which long I retains its Roman value. In geographical names, such as Alabama, Chicago, Granada, and Medina the accented vowels all have the Roman values. In such names as Isaiah, Achaia, Cairo, the diphthong also has its strict analytical value. Indeed, the tendency is becoming stronger to retain as much as possible the native pronunciation of foreign names.
We can see more examples like the symbol (c) may be used to represent a palatal stop (k), an alveopalatal affricate, an alveolar affricate, an aveopalatal fricative, a voiced alveopalatal affricate (in Turkish), a voiced pharyngeal fricative (in Somali), a dental click (in Zulu and Xhosa), not to mention a voiceless velar stop in many European languages and other languages with orthographic traditions influenced by European languages.
Conclusion
Phonetic alphabet largely reduces the number of written characters needed, because languages have only a limited number of sounds. In many ancient cultures the symbol for a sound came from a pictograph for a common word, signifying the word’s initial sound. In early Semitic languages, for example, the pictograph representing the word for house, ‘beth’ in the spoken language, eventually came to represent the sound of the consonant (b), the first sound in beth.
This Semitic symbol, which originally stood for the entire word beth and later for the sound b, became the symbol beta of the Greek and Roman alphabet and finally the uppercase B of the English alphabet. If English used the system of a picture to present the first sound of a word, we might write the word ‘sat’ by drawing sun +apple+ table. We would have to learn not to interpret those pictures as circle, fruit and furniture.
References
Albright, R. W., The International Phonetic Alphabet: its backgrounds and development.
International Phonetic Association. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association.
Robert A. Fradkin, Ph.D., reviewed article on phonetic alphabet.