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The alphabetic principle is the foundation of any alphabetic Writing System , such as those used for all European languages. The alphabetic principle is that, in such writing systems, each Grapheme (contextually) represented a Phoneme at the time and place of its Orthographic inception or last change.

The ultimate goal has long been understood to have one letter represent one sound constantly, e.g. in standard Castilian Spanish the letter ''u'' shall always represent the sound /u/. Due to Diachronic change and Synchronic geographical and sociocultural differences, there is, by definition, no standardised alphabet that renders the spoken language truthfully (and vice versa). Literal Language is always more uniform than Oral Language .

The alphabetic principle does not underlie a symbolic writing system like Chinese , where one written word may have several readings and one spoken word may have several writings. The principle is generally not applied to a Syllabary like Japanese Kana , because of the huge amount of Syllable s possible compared to Phone s.


ENGLISH ORTHOGRAPHY

English orthography is based on the alphabetic principle, but the acquisition of sounds and spellings from a variety of languages has made the alphabetic principle seem less reliable. For example, the sound /i/ is represented by nine relatively common graphemes (listed here in approximate order of Frequency ):

  • ''e'' as in ''meter''

  • ''ee'' as in ''meet''

  • ''ea'' as in ''meat''

  • ''e_e'' as in ''athlete''

  • ''y'' as in ''silly''

  • ''ie'' as in ''believe''

  • ''ei'' as in ''receive''

  • ''ey'' as in ''turkey''

  • ''i'' as in ''piano''


Other examples of English’s famously complex alphabet abound, as in the following poem, often reprinted and anonymously written:


I take it you already know,

Of tough and bough and cough and dough.

Others may stumble, but not you,

On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,

To learn of less familiar traps.


Beware of heard, a dreadful word,

That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead - it’s said like bed, not bead,

For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’!

Watch out for meat and great and threat,

(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).


A moth is not a moth in mother,

Nor both in bother, broth in brother.

And here is not a match for there,

Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there’s dose and rose and lose –

Just look them up – and goose and choose.

And cork and work and card and ward,

And font and front and word and sword.


And do and go and thwart and cart –

Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!


A dreadful language? Why man alive!

I’d mastered it when I was five.



Examples like these are held up by laymen as evidence that the alphabetic principle does not really work in English any more. Linguists argue that while there are, no doubt, some non-alphabetic elements to the language, the principle is very much at work in English. It is not like Chinese, where each Morpheme or word is represented by a single symbol that must be memorized in its own right. The argument about the value of the alphabetic principle is very closely connected with the argument about the value of teaching Phonics to children when they are learning to read.


ROLE OF THE ALPHABETIC PRINCIPLE IN BEGINNING READING

Learning the connection between the sounds of speech and print is a critical skill for beginning readers; this is because understanding that there is a direct relationship between letters and sounds enables a reader to retrieve the pronunciation of a written word associated with a spoken word. According to Juel (1991), Juel, C. (1991). Beginning reading. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (pp. 759-788). New York: Longman. the ability to match letters and letter combination with spoken sounds is a critical prerequisite to effective word identification. It is also the foundation of learning to spell.


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