For mid nineteenth century scientists of language, orthography was important. Spelling was a conduit of fact. The ability to render spoken sounds into written symbols was essential to understanding what was roundly understood as the “evolution” of language — the supposedly law-like progression of spoken communication from “primitive” to more “civilized” forms of sound-production. This paper examines a small but central debate between American linguists Lewis Grout and Josiah W. Gibbs over symbolic representations of sound-production and spelling in a community they termed “South African languages.” This debate provides in miniature a window into both the imperial ambitions of projects of standardized orthography and linguistic fact-making, as well as a sense of the moral and ethical stakes of attempting to concretize the slipperiness of “alternating” sounds. Ultimately, orthographic symbols were part of a project of value-making, connecting claims of phonetical truth to facts about bodies, labor, and political order.
