Is universal alphabet possible?

Great Debates
1

IANAL(inguist), just take it as my light hobby. Few days ago I started to wonder, if it would be possible, to make an universal alphabet suitable for all the languages of the planet Earth (and maybe for District 9 species too). Well. I think it could might be done, but I am not sure. So I am starting this topic here in Great Debates folder. I see a lot of problems, but I am sure most could be bypassed somehow.

As I see the whole thing, first, alphabet should be as strictly phonetic as possible. As in one sound - one character (letter). From my own experience I know it is easier to learn and communicate in languages with more strict phonetic rules (aside grammatic and other rules and peculiarities). Problem here as I see, such alphabet have more letters, sometimes drastically, as some languages use quite a lot more sounds than others. As far as I know, there are no completely phonetic alphabets on the world, some are more like this (Russian, Serbian, Czech, Greek), some are not (English, French), others are somewhere in between.
So to make it short, if we want that our international alphabet to have letters for all the used sounds in all the languages of the world, it would sure have at least 100 different letters. Impractical, at best.

Second problem, a lot (all?) languages use sounds with different length (short or long vowels, sometimes even consonants). Most alphabets use some kind of diacritics to distinguish length of a sound. Impractical, as we use that method to also distinguish intonation. So how should be that problem handled?

Third problem, some languages are tonal (Chinese), how to include that in this alphabet without further complicating that issue?

I am sure there are even more theoretical problems, not to mention practical problems - to learn all the population that alphabet, redesign computers, etc.

But for now, let’s just stay at theoretical level.

2

Is there a reason the international phonetic alphabet wouldn’t work? I think it’s supposed to have all those qualities.

3

International Phonetic Alphabet.

4

Unfortunately, even that’s still not enough sounds to properly describe human language. It’s more of a “Eh, it’s close enough for government work.” Plus, many language edge sounds into each other in ways that can’t easily be described.

However, with enough letters, you obviously do it. It just wouldn’t be useful.

5

Given that there are a finite number of phonemes, a complete international alphabet should be possible. A universal alphabet which anticipates phonemes from other extraterrestrial languages would probably have to reflect the physics of the sounds being made, and that’s a much harder problem.

6

Diacritics could presumably be used for that end. A bigger problem is the issue of homonyms; Japanese has an extremely small number of phonemes and relies on visual differences (Chinese characters) to distinguish between homonyms. It can be romanized very easily, but extensive use of such romanization can become quite difficult to read.

7

Yes, but how many diacritics for tonality are you going to allow before the whole system becomes overly cumbersome? There are 4 tones in Mandarin (plus a neutral) and 6 in Cantonese, plus those of all the other tonal languages.

8

First, what is the real point? Even theoretically. A technical tool, if so it exists. If for general usage, I think one can say barring positing a world government imposing such a thing (to what end escapes, but…) it is not realistically possible under anything but the most utopian scenarios.

9

There is one already but it’s a bit large.

10

My general idea for this topic is to make an international alphabet from scratch. That we have now is just a patch of different analogs.

I do not know, but for tonal sounds I’d recommend some kind solution similar to musical note scripts - slightly offset letter in certain direction or something like that and for length of sounds some kind of prolonged shadow on particular letter or something.

11

I am afraid this doesn’t clarify things at all. If you’re looking at a universal alphabet for technical usage, it exists, although certainly with drawbacks.

If for popular usage, that is general usage, it’s flat out not possible and any other conversation is really science fiction.

12

Do not quite agree. SciFi is SciFi as long until is approved as Sci. I try to go other way. Go Sci at first and Fi (still good cause in this topic) later. I believe all purpose universal alphabet is somehow possible without ridiculously high general costs.

(Of the record, my first language is not English and I need a bit of that kind of debate for purpose of improving my language skills for IELTS certificate for studying at UK College).

13

IPA. Don’t reinvent wheels that work pretty well. Add to them if you must.

14

What’s wrong with IPA? Why do we have to start from scratch, exactly?

The IPA is frequently used to transcribe languages that don’t have a written form, like native American languages. And it has markers to indicate tones, stress, and everything you want. And if you find phonemes that aren’t already in the IPA, ones can be added.

Of course, the big problem with a strict phonetic alphabet is that changes in dialect require changes in spelling. “Fire” can be pronounced in many different ways throughout the english-speaking world. “Fahr”, “Fia”, “Fiyr”, and so on. But this level of faithfulness to speech can be counterproductive unless you want the reader to get a sense of the idiolect of the speaker. And then we get into Inspector Clouseau territory–“Not an 'urse! An 'urse!”. People wouldn’t spell words the same way in California as they do in Texas. We have enough trouble with British spelling and American spelling, imagine if every dialect or every idiolect was spelled phonetically.

15

Then what you are suggesting by defintion ain’t a universal alphabet, is it?

16

Well, yeah. The point was that while a strict phonetic system has advantages, it also has some disadvantages that might not be obvious.

Unless you pick one “BBC English” dialect as your written standard, every person will write differently. Writing isn’t just a method of recording what someone would say if they were present. Transcriptions of spoken English don’t look much like clearly written English. So you could have a system that included the exact sounds that someone would speak if they were reading the words aloud, but who should that be? Should the writer write a phonetic transcription of his own idiolect? Or a standard dialect?

17

Does the International Phonetic Alphabet include clicks and such?

18

Yes. There are quite a handful of clicks encoded in IPA.

19

I’m afraid I am still not clear as to what you want to debate, so let me restate.

If you mean a universal alphabet for TECHNICAL use, then it exists. The IPA. Just looking at the IPA of course gives you a sense of the complexity of such an alphabet.

If you mean an alphabet for GENERAL (that is everyday usage), then it is impossible and well within the realm of science fiction as
(i) Teaching it would require students mastering symbols that they would never foreseeably use (thus forgetting and ergo defeating the purpose)
(ii) it would be cumbersome for daily usage
(iii) it would most certainly be rejected by populations attached to their “historic” alphabets and literature.

20

Well, you could teach the kids only the subset of the IPA that is used in their language. And if they read things from other languages, they’d have to be taught the alphabetical extensions needed for that new language/dialect.

Then you’d have universality in the sense that every time you see a character you’ve learned, you’d know how to pronounce it, and every time you see a character you don’t know you could look it up and find out how to pronounce it.

Of course, your third objection still holds.

Still, it might be possible to convince small language communities to give up their existing writing systems and switch to a subset of IPA. This already happens frequently for languages that don’t have an existing writing system, so there’s precedent. For major languages with over a million speakers/writers I think there’s not much hope.