{"id":525,"date":"2006-09-26T08:07:01","date_gmt":"2006-09-26T00:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/17th-century-proposal-for-a-universal-alphabet\/"},"modified":"2008-11-04T17:15:12","modified_gmt":"2008-11-04T09:15:12","slug":"17th-century-proposal-for-a-universal-alphabet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/17th-century-proposal-for-a-universal-alphabet\/","title":{"rendered":"17th century proposal for a universal alphabet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another article in the late seventeenth century journal discussed in <a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/early-british-article-on-chinese-characters\/\">my previous post<\/a> addresses the issue of a \u201cuniversal alphabet.\u201d Although I hate to admit it, it&#8217;s a lot more interesting &#8212; and easy to read &#8212; than the piece on Chinese characters. <\/p>\n<p>Here is the Lord&#8217;s Prayer in English, rendered in the alphabet of the author, Francis Lodwick. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/news_photos\/2006\/09\/lords_prayer_early_ipa.gif\" alt=\"the Lord's Prayer in English, rendered in an early proposal for a universal phonetic alphabet\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Lodwick didn&#8217;t just stop at letters. He addressed punctuation as well. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Characters signifying the various Modes of Expression may be these following, and ought to be placed at the beginning and end of every Sentence requiring it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>[ <span style=\"padding: 0 1em;\">]<\/span> explication<\/li>\n<li>? <span style=\"padding: 0 1em;\">?<\/span> interrogation<\/li>\n<li>( <span style=\"padding: 0 1em;\">)<\/span> parenthesis<\/li>\n<li>! <span style=\"padding: 0 1em;\">!<\/span> wonder<\/li>\n<li>\u00a1 <span style=\"padding: 0 1em;\">\u00a1<\/span> emphasis<\/li>\n<li>\u00bf <span style=\"padding: 0 1em;\">\u00bf<\/span> irony<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some of those marks far outdate similar proposals I&#8217;ve seen. <\/p>\n<p>sources and further readings: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk\/openurl.asp?genre=article&#038;issn=0260-7085&#038;volume=16&#038;spage=126\">An Essay towards An Universal Alphabet<\/a>, by Francis Lodwick. <em>Philosophical Transactions<\/em> (1683-1775), Volume 16, 1686\/1692, pp. 126-37.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/early-universal-romanization-system\/\">early \u2018universal\u2019 romanization system<\/a>, Pinyin News, April 20, 2006<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another article in the late seventeenth century journal discussed in my previous post addresses the issue of a \u201cuniversal alphabet.\u201d Although I hate to admit it, it&#8217;s a lot more interesting &#8212; and easy to read &#8212; than the piece &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2006\/17th-century-proposal-for-a-universal-alphabet\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,28,95,55,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphabet","category-languages","category-linguistics","category-literacy","category-writing-systems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1652,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/1652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}