Phonetic Transcription: History

Wilkins added a small circle or hook, at the top,
middle, or base, to represent one of six vowels. Thus
the composite symbol represented a syllable, either
vowel þ consonant or consonant þ vowel. Each category
of sound, such as oral stop consonant, fricative,
or nasal, had a characteristic shape, as did voiceless
and voiced sounds at the same place of articulation.
The system was ingenious, but the symbols could
easily be confused, and it is unlikely that anyone
other than Wilkins actually used it (see Figure 2B).
Wilkins’s contemporary, Francis Lodwick (see
Lodwick, Francis (1619–1694)), published a similar
system in 1686 under the title An essay towards an
universal alphabet. He stated in his text the important
principle that ‘‘no one character should have more
than one sound, nor any one sound be expressed by
more than one character.’’ The notation was a syllabary,
using shapes designed to show similarities between
the sounds symbolized, which are set out in a
table with six places of articulation: bilabial, dental,
palatal, velar, labiodental, and alveolar. The top symbol
in each column is the voiced stop, and the lower
ones are formed by progressive modifications of it. As
with Wilkins’s system, the vowels are added to the
consonant symbols as diacritics.
Another iconic alphabet is to be found in chapter 5
of the Traité de la formation méchanique des langues,
published in 1765 by the French scholar and magistrate,
Charles de Brosses (see Brosses, Charles de
(1709–1777)). The work was intended for scholars
researching into languages, rather than for everyday
use. Brosses called it ‘organic and universal.’ It is
based on a somewhat idiosyncratic analysis of speech
production, which, among other things, assumed that
the vowels were sounded at different points on a
corde, or string, equivalent to the vocal tract tube.
Brosses’s understanding of speech production is suspect
in a number of ways; for example, he classes
as a nasal consonant. His first attempt at notation
was complex, using symbols that pictured the
outline of the different vocal organs (lips, teeth, palate,
nose, etc.), but he simplified this subsequently,
using symbols made up of curves and straight lines
at different angles. The vowel symbols were attached
to the consonants to give a syllabic sign, and the
notation included composite symbols to represent
consonant clusters.
Nineteenth-Century Transcription
Systems
Volney and the Volney Prize
The French orientalist, statesman, and reformer,
Count Constantin François Volney (see Volney,
Phonetic Transcription: History 401
Constantin-Francois Chasseboeuf, Comte de
(1757–1820)), had been concerned for many years
about the difficulties experienced by Europeans in
learning oriental languages, and the poor standard
of the teaching of these languages. His book, Simplification
des langues orientales (Paris, 1795), put forward
a system for transliterating Arabic, Persian, and
Turkish into Roman script, supplemented by a few
Greek letters and some newly invented symbols. During
a visit to America from 1795 to 1798, he stayed
with William Thornton, and while there became
acquainted with Sir William Jones’s alphabet. He
conceived the idea of a universal alphabet, not for
scholarly purposes, but to act as a practical tool for
travelers, traders, etc. His 1795 system was used with
modifications for geographical names on the map of
Egypt compiled in 1803 by the French government,
but his later L’Alphabet européen appliqué aux langues
asiatiques (Paris, 1819) provided a fuller system
of 60 symbols, mostly Roman, replacing some of his
previous, newly invented, symbols with more familiar
letters modified by diacritics. However, Volney realized
that further research was needed, and his final
gesture was to leave 24 000 francs in his will, for a
prize to be awarded by the Institut de France to
anyone who could devise a suitable ‘harmonic alphabet’
(to bring harmony out the existing confusion of
practices) in Roman script (see Kemp, 1999).
The Volney Prize for the first year (1822) was to be
for an essay setting out the necessary conditions for
such an alphabet. The prizewinners were both German
librarians: Josef Scherer (d. 1829) argued that
what was needed was a transcription reflecting pronunciation,
rather than a transliteration, whereas
A. A. E. Schleiermacher (1787–1858), the co-winner,
favored a transliteration, for very much the same
reasons as those given by Sir William Jones. Scherer
and Schleiermacher submitted detailed transcription
systems for the 1823 prize, which was won by
Scherer; Schleiermacher’s essay was submitted later
in a revised form and was published in 1835. He
continued to work on his system, and his completed
scheme, Das harmonische oder allgemeine Alphabet
zur Transcription fremder Schriftsysteme in lateinische
Schrift (The harmonic or general alphabet for
the transcription of foreign writing systems into Latin
script), was eventually published in Darmstadt, after
his death (1864). Together with his new alphabet, this
work contained examples of the non-Roman scripts
of 10 languages. In all, 275 new characters had to be
cast. His notation excluded digraphs and letters from
other alphabets, which he felt would be typographically
unsuitable, so his main resource was diacritics,
both above and below the basic symbols. Some
of these were used systematically (e.g., to indicate