The Fundamental Principle of the Albanian Orthography
More than half a century has passed since the Albanian Orthography Congress (November 20-25, 1972). During this period, the Albanian standard language has become significantly consolidated, demonstrating its strength and vitality despite various discursive, social, and political challenges. Nevertheless, discussions regarding a potential revision of orthographic rules have persisted, often based on partial proposals lacking solid theoretical or empirical grounding. This study argues that the enduring confusion and unproductive cycles of debate stem not from the Congress's practical decisions, but from the inaccurate formulation of the fundamental principles of Albanian orthography as presented in its Spelling Rulebook (Drejtshkrimi i gjuhës shqipe, 1973). The official documents designate the «phonetic principle» as the foundational principle of Albanian orthography, complemented by a so-called «morphological principle.» This paper critically re-examines these formulations through the lens of general graphematics. It demonstrates that the phonetic principle-which prescribes writing words as they are pronounced in literary discourse-is theoretically untenable and leads to inconsistencies. Conversely, the alleged morphological principle, which aims to preserve the uniform spelling of morphemes despite phonetic changes, is shown to be a misinterpretation of basic phoneme-grapheme correspondences. The study argues that Albanian, like all natural languages with alphabetic writing systems, is fundamentally governed by the phonological principle. This principle prioritizes the phoneme over its variable phonetic realizations (allophones). The preservation of morphemic identity is not an independent morphological requirement, but a natural consequence of faithfully representing the phonemic composition of words. The paper provides extensive empirical evidence from Albanian morphology (e.g., the writing of unstressed , final devoicing, plural formations) and contrasts it with genuine cases of morphological spelling in languages like French, German, Greek, and English, where morphograms (graphemes with no phonetic correspondence) are present. Since Albanian lacks morphograms, invoking a morphological principle is deemed superfluous and theoretically misleading. Recognizing the phonological principle as the true foundation of Albanian orthography has crucial practical implications: it provides a robust theoretical shield against arbitrary or ideologically motivated proposals for orthographic reform. By clarifying how the writing system actually functions, this principle ensures the stability of the communicative code, protects the integrity of the linguistic sign, and redirects scholarly debate from unfounded revisionism toward a scientifically grounded understanding of Albanian orthography. The paper concludes that any future discussion of orthographic changes must be guided by the need for communicative stability and by respect for the established logographic images of words, not by phonetic variability or morphological arguments.