Spelling reform
Encyclopedia
Many languages have undergone spelling reform, where a deliberate, often officially sanctioned or mandated, change to spelling
takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common.
There are a number of reasons driving such reforms: easing the task of child
ren or immigrants becoming literate, making the language more useful for international communication
or aesthetic or political reasons.
Opposition to reforms is often based upon concern that old literature will become inaccessible, the presumed suppression of regional accents, or simple conservatism based upon concern over unforeseen consequences. Reforms that concentrate on removing unnecessary difficulties take account of such arguments. Consistency is more important than phonemic consistency alone. Reform efforts are further hampered by habit and a lack of a central authority to set new spelling standards.
Spelling reform may also be associated with wider discussion of what the official script
should be, language planning
and language reform
.
scripts one might expect there to be a close match of the script or spelling with the spoken sound
. However, even if they match at one time and place for some speakers, over time they often do not match well for the majority: one sound may be represented by various combinations of letters and one letter or group of letters pronounced in various ways. In cases where spelling takes account of grammatical
features these too may become inconsistent.
People with non-standard
spelling often suffer adverse opinions, as one's mastery of standard spelling is often thought to go together with the level of one's formal education or intelligence. Spelling is easier in languages with more or less consistent spelling systems—like Finnish
, Serbian
, Italian
, Portuguese
and Spanish
—than in languages where the pronunciation has moved on since the spelling was fixed, or which use anachronistic or inconsistent spellings, like Irish
, English
or French
.
Spelling reforms have been proposed for various languages over the years; these have ranged from modest attempts to eliminate particular irregularities (such as SR1
) through more far-reaching reforms (such as Cut Spelling
) to attempts to introduce a full phonemic orthography
, like the Shavian alphabet
or its revised version, Quikscript
, the latest DevaGreek alphabet, the Latinization of Turkish
or hangul
in Korea
.
Superfluity of graphemes (letters or characters) is often an issue in spelling reform, which prompts the "Economic Argument"—significant cost savings in the production materials over time—as promulgated by George Bernard Shaw
, although in modern times with computer systems changing rapidly and equipped to produce the scripts of a variety of languages this is now a bit far-fetched.
The idea of phonemic spelling has also been criticized as it would hide morphological
similarities between words with different pronunciations, and thus obscure their meanings. It is also argued that when people read, they do not in reality try to work out the sequence of sounds composing each word, but instead they recognize words either as a whole, or as a sequence of small number of semantically significant units (for example morphology might be read as morph+ology, rather than as a sequence of a larger number of phoneme
s). In a system of phonetic spelling, these semantic units become less distinct, as various allomorph
s can be pronounced differently in different contexts. For example, in English spelling, most past participles are spelled with an -ed on the end, even though this can have several pronunciations (compare kissed and interrupted).
One of the difficulties in introducing a spelling reform is how to it is reflect different pronunciations, often linked to regions or classes. If the reform attempts to be absolutely phonemic in some model dialect, speakers of other dialects will find conflicts with their own usage.
contains many irregularities due to a number of factors. The large number of words assimilated from other languages is one of them; and even more importantly, English began to be widely written and printed during the Middle English
period: the subsequent development of modern English
included a Great Vowel Shift
and many other changes in phonology
. The older, etymological
spellings have been retained despite major shifts in phonology.
Modern English has anywhere from 14 to 22 separate vowel
and diphthong
phoneme
s, depending on dialect
, and 26 or 27 consonant
phonemes. A simple phoneme-letter representation of this language within the 26 letters of the English alphabet
is impossible, and multi-letter graphemes are a part of most spelling reform proposals. (They are part of current English spelling as well, for example the first two phonemes of "sheep" ˈʃiːp are represented by the digraphs
, /ʃ/, and , /i/, respectively.) Diacritic
marks have also formed part of spelling reform proposals.
Critics have pointed out that a consistent phonemically based system would be impractical: for example, phoneme distribution differs between British English
and American English
; furthermore, while English Received Pronunciation
features about 20 vowels, some second language varieties of English have 10 or even fewer. A phonemic system would therefore not be universal.
Furthermore, only a minority of the huge vocabulary of the English language is used in everyday speech: the remainder is mainly used in technical, literary and other contexts where the written language is the primary means of communication, and in many cases the majority of speakers of the language are unsure of the correct pronunciation. It would be counter-productive to alter the spelling of these words to fit their pronunciation more closely.
A number of proposals have been made to reform English spelling. Some were proposed by Noah Webster
early in the 19th century. He was in part concerned to distinguish American from British usage. Some of his suggestions resulted in the differences between American and British spelling
.
orthography and promulgated it as the official romanization system of mainland China. Since pinyin became the international standard for Chinese romanization in 1982, other romanizations (including the Wade-Giles
system, Gwoyeu Romatzyh
developed by Yuen Ren Chao
, and Latinxua Sin Wenz) have become rarely used.
The Republic of China on Taiwan continued to use Wade-Giles romanization until the turn of the 21st century, when the Tongyong Pinyin romanization was introduced. Tongyong Pinyin has been sporadically adopted throughout the island, and criticized for inconsistency. Hanyu Pinyin, the same system used in the mainland, was formally adopted in 2009.
has undergone a series of major spelling reforms
beginning in 1804 - with varying levels of official sanction and popular acceptance across the areas in which varieties of the Dutch language
are spoken.
The Dutch Language Union
, founded in 1980 by the Netherlands and Belgium, is now the source of official reforms, and in 1995 issued the "Green Booklet"
reform. Although in Belgium the official spelling reform was generally accepted without protest, in the Netherlands
there was a popular backlash and the release of the White Booklet
. Currently these two spellings are both in use in the Netherlands
- the 'green' one by schools and officials, and the 'white' one by newspapers, magazines and television stations.
, Belgium
, and Quebec
in 2004, but it has not yet been widely adopted. The 2012 version of Larousse
incorporates all of the changes. The 2009 version of Le Petit Robert incorporates most of the changes. There are 6000 words, which also includes words that were not originally included in the 1990 reform, for example, charrette or charette, based on chariot. As of 16 March 2009, several major Belgian publishing groups have begun to apply the new spelling in their on-line publications.
.
Even though German spelling was already more consistent than English or French spelling, the German speaking
countries signed an agreement on spelling reforms in 1996; these were planned to be gradually introduced beginning in 1998 and fully in force by 2005.
The so-called Rechtschreibreform is still subject to dispute, and polls consistently show a majority against the new rules. In summer 2004, several newspapers and magazines returned to the old rules.
s inherited from Ancient Greek
, which have been dispensed with or simplified in the modern monotonic orthography. See also Katharevousa
.
Indonesian
underwent spelling reforms in 1947 and 1972, after which its spelling was more consistent with the form of the language spoken in Malaysia (i.e. Malay
).
The first of these changes (oe to u) occurred around the time of independence in 1947; all of the others were a part of an officially mandated spelling reform in 1972. Some of the old spellings, which were more closely derived from the Dutch language
, still survive in proper names.
syllabaries
were a purely phonetic representation used for writing the Japanese language
when they were invented around 800 AD as a simplification of Chinese-derived kanji
characters. However, the syllabaries were not completely codified and alternate letterforms, or hentaigana
, existed for many sounds until standardization in 1900. In addition, due to linguistic drift
the pronunciation of many Japanese words changed, mostly in a systematic way, from the classical Japanese language
as spoken when the kana syllabaries were invented. Despite this, words continued to be spelled in kana as they were in classical Japanese, reflecting the classic rather than the modern pronunciation, until a Cabinet order in 1946 officially adopted spelling reform, making the spelling of words purely phonetic (with only 3 sets of exceptions) and dropping characters that represented sounds no longer used in the language.
Before Norway became independent in 1905, the Norwegian language
was written in Danish with minor characteristic regionalisms and idioms. After independence, there were spelling reforms in 1907, 1917, 1938, 1941, 1981 and 2005, reflecting the tug-of-war between the spelling styles preferred by traditionalists and reformers, depending on social class, urbanization, ideology, education and dialect. The 2005 reform re-introduced several traditional spellings that had been abolished by the earlier spelling reforms. Little used spellings were also excluded.
by reason of ecclesiastical tradition, and those rendered obsolete by changes in phonetics
.
When Peter I
introduced his "civil script" (гражданский шрифт, graždanskij šrift) in 1708, based on more Western-looking letter shapes, spelling was simplified as well.
The most recent major reform of Russian spelling was carried out shortly after the Russian Revolution
. The Russian orthography
was simplified by eliminating four obsolete letters (ѣ, і, ѵ, and ѳ) and the archaic usage of the letter ъ (called yer
, or hard sign) at the ends of words, which had originally represented a vowel with a sound similar to schwa
, but had become silent by the Middle Ages.
which forms modern standard Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin languages went through a series of major spelling reforms in early and middle 19th century. Up until that time two distinct writing traditions have evolved. Western dialectical group has been written using Latin alphabet, while eastern (Serbian) has been using an archaic form of the Cyrillic alphabet
. Despite several attempts there were no universally accepted spelling standard employing Latin alphabet and Cyrillic version was considered outdated.
A series of reforms have been undertaken to establish the standards, in order to bring the writing system to accordance with spoken language. The reform movement was spearheaded by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj
for Latin based writing system, and Serbian reformer Vuk Stefanović Karadžić
for Cyrillic version.
The reform efforts were coordinated in order to correlate the two writing systems, culminating in Vienna Literary Agreement
in 1850. The system thus established has remained in service since. Slovene language, not a part of Serbo-Croatian dialectical continuum was also covered by the same reform movement. After the second world war and formulation of Macedonian
literary language the same system has been extended, with some modifications to it as well.
All of these writing systems exhibit a high degree of correspondence between language sounds and letter characters, making them highly phonetic and very consistent.
succeeded in making his proposal official in several South American countries, but they later returned to the RAE
standard.
Another initiative, the Ortografía Fonética Rasional Ispanoamericana, remained a curiosity. Juan Ramón Jiménez
proposed changing -ge- and -gi to -je- and ji, but this is applied only in editions of his works or his wife
's. Gabriel García Márquez
raised the issue of reform during a congress at Zacatecas
, and drew attention to the issue, but no changes were made. The Academies, however, change several tidbits from time to time. See also Spanish orthography.
Spelling
Spelling is the writing of one or more words with letters and diacritics. In addition, the term often, but not always, means an accepted standard spelling or the process of naming the letters...
takes place. Proposals for such reform are also common.
There are a number of reasons driving such reforms: easing the task of child
Child
Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...
ren or immigrants becoming literate, making the language more useful for international communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
or aesthetic or political reasons.
Opposition to reforms is often based upon concern that old literature will become inaccessible, the presumed suppression of regional accents, or simple conservatism based upon concern over unforeseen consequences. Reforms that concentrate on removing unnecessary difficulties take account of such arguments. Consistency is more important than phonemic consistency alone. Reform efforts are further hampered by habit and a lack of a central authority to set new spelling standards.
Spelling reform may also be associated with wider discussion of what the official script
Official script
An official script is a writing system that is specifically designated to be official in the constitutions or other applicable laws of countries, states, and other jurisdictions. Akin to an official language, an official script is much rarer. It is used primarily where an official language is in...
should be, language planning
Language planning
Language planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots...
and language reform
Language reform
Language reform is a type of language planning by massive change to a language. The usual tools of language reform are simplification and purification. Simplification makes the language easier to use by regularizing vocabulary and grammar...
.
Arguments for reform
In languages written with alphabetic or syllabarySyllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
scripts one might expect there to be a close match of the script or spelling with the spoken sound
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
. However, even if they match at one time and place for some speakers, over time they often do not match well for the majority: one sound may be represented by various combinations of letters and one letter or group of letters pronounced in various ways. In cases where spelling takes account of grammatical
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
features these too may become inconsistent.
People with non-standard
Standard language
A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
spelling often suffer adverse opinions, as one's mastery of standard spelling is often thought to go together with the level of one's formal education or intelligence. Spelling is easier in languages with more or less consistent spelling systems—like Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
—than in languages where the pronunciation has moved on since the spelling was fixed, or which use anachronistic or inconsistent spellings, like Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
or French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.
Spelling reforms have been proposed for various languages over the years; these have ranged from modest attempts to eliminate particular irregularities (such as SR1
SR1
Spelling Reform 1 or Spelling Reform step 1 is an English spelling reform proposal advocated by Harry Lindgren. It calls for the short sound to always be spelt with E. For example, friend would become frend and head would become hed...
) through more far-reaching reforms (such as Cut Spelling
Cut Spelling
Cut Spelling is a system of English-language spelling reform which reduces redundant letters and makes substitutions to improve correspondence with the spoken word. It was designed by Christopher Upward and was for a time being popularized by the Simplified Spelling Society. The resulting words are...
) to attempts to introduce a full phonemic orthography
Phonemic orthography
A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. In terms of orthographic depth, these are termed shallow orthographies, contrasting with deep orthographies...
, like the Shavian alphabet
Shavian alphabet
The Shavian alphabet is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of the conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw...
or its revised version, Quikscript
Quikscript
Quikscript is an alphabet specifically designed for the English language. Quikscript replaces traditional English orthography, which uses the Latin alphabet, with completely new letters. It is phonemically regular, compact, and comfortably and quickly written...
, the latest DevaGreek alphabet, the Latinization of Turkish
Turkish alphabet
The Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
or hangul
Hangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
in Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
.
Superfluity of graphemes (letters or characters) is often an issue in spelling reform, which prompts the "Economic Argument"—significant cost savings in the production materials over time—as promulgated by George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, although in modern times with computer systems changing rapidly and equipped to produce the scripts of a variety of languages this is now a bit far-fetched.
The idea of phonemic spelling has also been criticized as it would hide morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
similarities between words with different pronunciations, and thus obscure their meanings. It is also argued that when people read, they do not in reality try to work out the sequence of sounds composing each word, but instead they recognize words either as a whole, or as a sequence of small number of semantically significant units (for example morphology might be read as morph+ology, rather than as a sequence of a larger number of phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s). In a system of phonetic spelling, these semantic units become less distinct, as various allomorph
Allomorph
In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound without changing meaning. The term allomorph explains the comprehension of phonological variations for specific morphemes....
s can be pronounced differently in different contexts. For example, in English spelling, most past participles are spelled with an -ed on the end, even though this can have several pronunciations (compare kissed and interrupted).
One of the difficulties in introducing a spelling reform is how to it is reflect different pronunciations, often linked to regions or classes. If the reform attempts to be absolutely phonemic in some model dialect, speakers of other dialects will find conflicts with their own usage.
English
English spellingEnglish orthography
English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, uses a set of habits to represent speech sounds in writing. In most other languages, these habits are regular enough so that they may be called rules...
contains many irregularities due to a number of factors. The large number of words assimilated from other languages is one of them; and even more importantly, English began to be widely written and printed during the Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
period: the subsequent development of modern English
Modern English
Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...
included a Great Vowel Shift
Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in England between 1350 and 1500.The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen , a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term....
and many other changes in phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The older, etymological
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
spellings have been retained despite major shifts in phonology.
Modern English has anywhere from 14 to 22 separate vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
and diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s, depending on dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
, and 26 or 27 consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
phonemes. A simple phoneme-letter representation of this language within the 26 letters of the English alphabet
English alphabet
The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters and 2 ligatures – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet:...
is impossible, and multi-letter graphemes are a part of most spelling reform proposals. (They are part of current English spelling as well, for example the first two phonemes of "sheep" ˈʃiːp are represented by the digraphs
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
marks have also formed part of spelling reform proposals.
Critics have pointed out that a consistent phonemically based system would be impractical: for example, phoneme distribution differs between British English
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
and American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
; furthermore, while English Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
features about 20 vowels, some second language varieties of English have 10 or even fewer. A phonemic system would therefore not be universal.
Furthermore, only a minority of the huge vocabulary of the English language is used in everyday speech: the remainder is mainly used in technical, literary and other contexts where the written language is the primary means of communication, and in many cases the majority of speakers of the language are unsure of the correct pronunciation. It would be counter-productive to alter the spelling of these words to fit their pronunciation more closely.
A number of proposals have been made to reform English spelling. Some were proposed by Noah Webster
Noah Webster
Noah Webster was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author...
early in the 19th century. He was in part concerned to distinguish American from British usage. Some of his suggestions resulted in the differences between American and British spelling
American and British English spelling differences
One of the ways in which American English and British English differ is in spelling.-Historical origins:In the early 18th century, English spelling was not standardized. Differences became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries...
.
Chinese (romanization)
In the 1950s, the Language Reform Committee of the People's Republic of China devised the Hanyu PinyinPinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
orthography and promulgated it as the official romanization system of mainland China. Since pinyin became the international standard for Chinese romanization in 1982, other romanizations (including the Wade-Giles
Wade-Giles
Wade–Giles , sometimes abbreviated Wade, is a romanization system for the Mandarin Chinese language. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Wade during the mid-19th century , and was given completed form with Herbert Giles' Chinese–English dictionary of 1892.Wade–Giles was the most...
system, Gwoyeu Romatzyh
Gwoyeu Romatzyh
Gwoyeu Romatzyh , abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Mandarin Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The system was conceived by Y.R. Chao and developed by a group of linguists including Chao and Lin Yutang from 1925 to 1926. Chao himself later published influential works in linguistics using GR...
developed by Yuen Ren Chao
Yuen Ren Chao
Chao Yuen Ren was a Chinese American linguist and amateur composer. He made important contributions to the modern study of Chinese phonology and grammar....
, and Latinxua Sin Wenz) have become rarely used.
The Republic of China on Taiwan continued to use Wade-Giles romanization until the turn of the 21st century, when the Tongyong Pinyin romanization was introduced. Tongyong Pinyin has been sporadically adopted throughout the island, and criticized for inconsistency. Hanyu Pinyin, the same system used in the mainland, was formally adopted in 2009.
Dutch
DutchDutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
has undergone a series of major spelling reforms
History of Dutch orthography
The History of Dutch Orthography covers the changes in spelling of Dutch both in the Netherlands itself and in the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in Belgium.- Dutch spelling in the Middle Ages :...
beginning in 1804 - with varying levels of official sanction and popular acceptance across the areas in which varieties of the Dutch language
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
are spoken.
The Dutch Language Union
Dutch Language Union
The Dutch Language Union is an international institution for discussing issues regarding the Dutch language. It was founded on 9 September 1980 by the Netherlands and Belgium...
, founded in 1980 by the Netherlands and Belgium, is now the source of official reforms, and in 1995 issued the "Green Booklet"
Wordlist of the Dutch language
The Word list of the Dutch language is a list of words in the correct official spelling of the Dutch language . It is officially established by the Dutch Language Union , and is published in dictionary style. Because of the colour of its published form, it is better known as the Green Booklet...
reform. Although in Belgium the official spelling reform was generally accepted without protest, in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
there was a popular backlash and the release of the White Booklet
White Booklet
Het Witte Boekje is the popular name for the Spelling Guide of Our Language , a publication of the Genootschap Onze Taal. The first edition was released in October 1998; the latest edition is the tenth and was released in 2004...
. Currently these two spellings are both in use in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
- the 'green' one by schools and officials, and the 'white' one by newspapers, magazines and television stations.
French
In 1990, a substantial reform ordered by the French prime minister changed the spelling of about 2000 words as well as some grammar rules. After much delay, the new recommended orthography received official support in FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, and Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
in 2004, but it has not yet been widely adopted. The 2012 version of Larousse
Larousse
Larousse can refer to:*Éditions Larousse, a French publishing house founded by Pierre Larousse**some of its publications***Grand Larousse encyclopédique***Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology***Larousse Gastronomique***Petit Larousse...
incorporates all of the changes. The 2009 version of Le Petit Robert incorporates most of the changes. There are 6000 words, which also includes words that were not originally included in the 1990 reform, for example, charrette or charette, based on chariot. As of 16 March 2009, several major Belgian publishing groups have begun to apply the new spelling in their on-line publications.
German
German spelling was officially reformed in 1901 and certain older spelling patterns were updated: for instance some occurrences of "th" were changed to "t", the use of hyphens changed, and some instances of "c" were changed to "z". In 1944 another spelling reform was due to be introduced, but ultimately came to nothing because of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Even though German spelling was already more consistent than English or French spelling, the German speaking
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
countries signed an agreement on spelling reforms in 1996; these were planned to be gradually introduced beginning in 1998 and fully in force by 2005.
The so-called Rechtschreibreform is still subject to dispute, and polls consistently show a majority against the new rules. In summer 2004, several newspapers and magazines returned to the old rules.
Greek
The classical, medieval, and early modern polytonic orthography contained a number of archaismArchaism
In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula...
s inherited from Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, which have been dispensed with or simplified in the modern monotonic orthography. See also Katharevousa
Katharevousa
Katharevousa , is a form of the Greek language conceived in the early 19th century as a compromise between Ancient Greek and the Modern Greek of the time, with a vocabulary largely based on ancient forms, but a much-simplified grammar. Originally, it was widely used both for literary and official...
.
Indonesian
- Related article: Differences between Malay and Indonesian: Orthography
Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
underwent spelling reforms in 1947 and 1972, after which its spelling was more consistent with the form of the language spoken in Malaysia (i.e. Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
).
| Old spelling | New spelling |
|---|---|
| oe | u |
| tj | c |
| dj | j |
| j | y |
| nj | ny |
| sj | sy |
| ch | kh |
The first of these changes (oe to u) occurred around the time of independence in 1947; all of the others were a part of an officially mandated spelling reform in 1972. Some of the old spellings, which were more closely derived from the Dutch language
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, still survive in proper names.
Japanese
The original Japanese kanaKana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
syllabaries
Syllabary
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
were a purely phonetic representation used for writing the Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
when they were invented around 800 AD as a simplification of Chinese-derived kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
characters. However, the syllabaries were not completely codified and alternate letterforms, or hentaigana
Hentaigana
are historical variants of modern standard hiragana. They are a legacy of man'yōgana, where many different kanji could be used to represent the same sound value. As the man'yōgana became simplified into cursive forms, multiple hiragana, including the hentaigana, was the result...
, existed for many sounds until standardization in 1900. In addition, due to linguistic drift
Drift (linguistics)
There are two types of linguistic drift, a unidirectional short-term and cyclic long-term drift.-Short-term unidirectional drift:According to Sapir, drift is the unconscious change in natural language...
the pronunciation of many Japanese words changed, mostly in a systematic way, from the classical Japanese language
Classical Japanese language
The is the literary form of the Japanese language that was the standard until the early Shōwa period . It is based on Early Middle Japanese, the language as spoken during the Heian era , but exhibits some later influences. Its use started to decline during the late Meiji period when novelists...
as spoken when the kana syllabaries were invented. Despite this, words continued to be spelled in kana as they were in classical Japanese, reflecting the classic rather than the modern pronunciation, until a Cabinet order in 1946 officially adopted spelling reform, making the spelling of words purely phonetic (with only 3 sets of exceptions) and dropping characters that represented sounds no longer used in the language.
Norwegian
- Related article: Norwegian language struggleNorwegian language struggleThe Norwegian language struggle is an ongoing controversy within Norwegian culture and politics related to spoken and written Norwegian. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway due to Danish rule...
Before Norway became independent in 1905, the Norwegian language
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
was written in Danish with minor characteristic regionalisms and idioms. After independence, there were spelling reforms in 1907, 1917, 1938, 1941, 1981 and 2005, reflecting the tug-of-war between the spelling styles preferred by traditionalists and reformers, depending on social class, urbanization, ideology, education and dialect. The 2005 reform re-introduced several traditional spellings that had been abolished by the earlier spelling reforms. Little used spellings were also excluded.
Portuguese
The original medieval spelling of Portuguese was mostly phonemic, but, from the Renaissance on, many authors who admired classical culture started to use an etymological orthography. In the early 20th century, however, spelling reforms in Portugal and Brazil reverted the orthography to phonemic principles. Subsequent reforms have aimed mainly at three objectives, with variable success: to eliminate the few traces of redundant etymological spelling that remained, to reduce the number of words marked with diacritics, and to bring the Brazilian spelling standard and the European-African spelling standard closer to each other.Russian
Over time, there have been a number of changes in spelling. They mostly involved the elimination of the (purely etymological) Greek letters that had been retained in the Cyrillic alphabetCyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
by reason of ecclesiastical tradition, and those rendered obsolete by changes in phonetics
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
.
When Peter I
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
introduced his "civil script" (гражданский шрифт, graždanskij šrift) in 1708, based on more Western-looking letter shapes, spelling was simplified as well.
The most recent major reform of Russian spelling was carried out shortly after the Russian Revolution
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
. The Russian orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
was simplified by eliminating four obsolete letters (ѣ, і, ѵ, and ѳ) and the archaic usage of the letter ъ (called yer
Yer
The letter yer of the Cyrillic alphabet, also spelled jer or er, is known as the hard sign in the modern Russian and Rusyn alphabets and as er golyam in the Bulgarian alphabet...
, or hard sign) at the ends of words, which had originally represented a vowel with a sound similar to schwa
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
, but had become silent by the Middle Ages.
South Slavic languages
Soth Slavic Languages, a dialectical continuum also known as Serbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian language
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
which forms modern standard Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin languages went through a series of major spelling reforms in early and middle 19th century. Up until that time two distinct writing traditions have evolved. Western dialectical group has been written using Latin alphabet, while eastern (Serbian) has been using an archaic form of the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
. Despite several attempts there were no universally accepted spelling standard employing Latin alphabet and Cyrillic version was considered outdated.
A series of reforms have been undertaken to establish the standards, in order to bring the writing system to accordance with spoken language. The reform movement was spearheaded by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj
Ljudevit Gaj
Ljudevit Gaj was a Croatian linguist, politician, journalist and writer. He was one of the central figures of the Croatian national reformation, also known as the Illyrian Movement.-Origin:...
for Latin based writing system, and Serbian reformer Vuk Stefanović Karadžić
Vuk Stefanovic Karadžic
Vuk Stefanović Karadžić was a Serbian philolog and linguist, the major reformer of the Serbian language, and deserves, perhaps, for his collections of songs, fairy tales, and riddles to be called the father of the study of Serbian folklore. He was the author of the first Serbian dictionary...
for Cyrillic version.
The reform efforts were coordinated in order to correlate the two writing systems, culminating in Vienna Literary Agreement
Vienna Literary Agreement
Vienna Literary Agreement is a designation of a meeting held in March 1850, when writers from Croatia, Serbia and one from Slovenia met to discuss the extent to which their literatures could be conjoined and united.-Historical context:...
in 1850. The system thus established has remained in service since. Slovene language, not a part of Serbo-Croatian dialectical continuum was also covered by the same reform movement. After the second world war and formulation of Macedonian
Macedonian language
Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
literary language the same system has been extended, with some modifications to it as well.
All of these writing systems exhibit a high degree of correspondence between language sounds and letter characters, making them highly phonetic and very consistent.
Spanish
There have been several initiatives to reform the spelling of Spanish: Andrés BelloAndrés Bello
Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López was a Venezuelan humanist, poet, lawmaker, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture...
succeeded in making his proposal official in several South American countries, but they later returned to the RAE
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
standard.
Another initiative, the Ortografía Fonética Rasional Ispanoamericana, remained a curiosity. Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French concept of "pure poetry."-Biography:Jiménez was born in Moguer, near Huelva, in...
proposed changing -ge- and -gi to -je- and ji, but this is applied only in editions of his works or his wife
Zenobia Camprubí
Zenobia Camprubí Aymar was a Spanish-born writer and poet; she was also a noted translator of the works of Rabindranath Tagore....
's. Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
raised the issue of reform during a congress at Zacatecas
Zacatecas, Zacatecas
Zacatecas is a city and municipality in Mexico and the capital of the state of Zacatecas. It is located in the north central part of the country. The city had its start as a Spanish mining camp in the mid 16th century. Prior to this, the area's rich deposits in silver and other minerals were known...
, and drew attention to the issue, but no changes were made. The Academies, however, change several tidbits from time to time. See also Spanish orthography.
Other languages
- Armenian: Spelling reform of the Armenian language 1922-1924Spelling reform of the Armenian language 1922-1924The spelling reform of the Armenian language 1922–1924 was a spelling reform of the Armenian alphabet conducted in the Armenian SSR. Although it is barely practiced outside of Armenia and the Post-Soviet states because it was not adopted by Armenians in the diaspora, about half of the Armenian...
- Catalan: the spelling of the Catalan languageCatalan languageCatalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
was standardized, mostly by Pompeu FabraPompeu FabraPompeu Fabra i Poch was a Catalan grammarian, the main author of the normative reform of contemporary Catalan language....
in the early 20th century. - Chinese: Simplified Chinese characterSimplified Chinese characterSimplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Xiandai Hanyu Tongyong Zibiao for use in Mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of many standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language...
s replaced traditional charactersTraditional Chinese characterTraditional Chinese characters refers to Chinese characters in any character set which does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. It most commonly refers to characters in the standardized character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong, or in the Kangxi...
in Mainland ChinaMainland ChinaMainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
, although traditional characters are still used in TaiwanTaiwanTaiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
and Hong KongHong KongHong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
. - Czech: The spelling of the Czech languageCzech languageCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
was reformed and regularised as early as the 15th century through the publication of the manuscript Orthographia bohemicaOrthographia bohemicaDe orthographia bohemica is an anonymously-authored Latin work from the early 15th century, in which the Czech language was given a codified spelling.The reformer Jan Hus is often suspected to be the work's author.-Provenance:...
. - Danish: In a 1948 reform, the Danish languageDanish languageDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
abandoned the capitalization of common nouns (originally a German-inspired rule) to align with the other Scandinavian languages. At the same time, the digraph Aa/aa was abandoned in favor of the Swedish letter ÅÅÅ represents various sounds in several languages. Å is part of the alphabets used for the Alemannic and the Bavarian-Austrian dialects of German...
/å. The double-a digraph is still widely used in personal names and is optional in a few placenames. In 1980, WWW is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V...
was recognized as a distinct letter. Before that, it was considered a variation of VVV is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details....
for purposes of collation. - Filipino: Filipino orthography
- Georgian languageGeorgian languageGeorgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
: In 19th century Georgian alphabet undergone removal of five letters(ჱ, ჳ, ჲ, ჴ, ჵ). - Hebrew: The Hebrew languageHebrew languageHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
has two systems of spelling - with and without vowel marks, called Niqqud. Niqqud is used consistently only in books for children, poetry, and some textbooks and religious literature. Most other texts are usually written without vowel marks. The Academy of the Hebrew Language publishes rules for both vocalized and unvocalized spelling. The latest major revision to the rules of unvocalized spelling were published in 1996, although in practice they are not mandatory. To date there is no standard spelling for unvocalized Hebrew and many Hebrew speakers spell according to their own instinct and custom. See Hebrew spellingHebrew spellingThere are several systems of Hebrew spelling that are used. The Hebrew alphabet contains 22 letters, all of which are primarily consonants. This is because the Hebrew script is an abjad, that is, its letters indicate consonant, not vowels, nor syllables...
. - Korean: The hangul alphabetHangulHangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
replaced hanjaHanjaHanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...
ideograms in the Korean languageKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
. - Latvian: The Latvian languageLatvian languageLatvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
discarded the digraph Uo in 1914, the letter Ō in 1946, and the letters Ŗ and Ch in 1957. - Swedish: The last major reform of Swedish orthography occurred in 1906. It homogenized the spelling of /v/ and changed the adverbial and neuter adjectival ending -dt to -t or -tt depending on the length of the preceding vowel. The phrase hvarken af silfver eller rödt guld was now spelled varken av silver eller rött guld. Some people had called for an even more radical reform which would also homogenise the spellings of the /j/, /ɕ/ and /ɧ/ sounds, which to this day remain highly diverse in Swedish.
- Turkish: The Turkish alphabetTurkish alphabetThe Turkish alphabet is a Latin alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy...
replaced the Ottoman Turkish script in the Turkish language - Vietnamese: In the Vietnamese languageVietnamese languageVietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
, the quốc ngữ script replaced the previous chữ nho and chữ nôm systems in the 20th century.
See also
- False etymologyFalse etymologyFolk etymology is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one. Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation are...
- Language planningLanguage planningLanguage planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots...
- Language policyLanguage policyMany countries have a language policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages. Although nations historically have used language policies most often to promote one official language at the expense of others, many countries now have policies designed to...
- Language reformLanguage reformLanguage reform is a type of language planning by massive change to a language. The usual tools of language reform are simplification and purification. Simplification makes the language easier to use by regularizing vocabulary and grammar...
- Official scriptOfficial scriptAn official script is a writing system that is specifically designated to be official in the constitutions or other applicable laws of countries, states, and other jurisdictions. Akin to an official language, an official script is much rarer. It is used primarily where an official language is in...
- Otto BaslerOtto BaslerOtto Basler was a German philologist.Basler studied German, Romance studies, English and History at the University of Freiburg. In World War I he was a reserve officer...
External links
- The Simplified Spelling Society
- A brief history of spelling reform in Norway
- "Language Reform on the Kitchen Table," by John Maher, Professor of Linguistics at International Christian University in Tokyo
- Revolutionary Scripts: The Politics of Writing Systems, by Richard Oliver Collin, at Omniglot
- "The Standardization of Irish Spelling: an Overview", by Muiris Ó Laoire
- Writing Systems Reforms and Revolutions
- American Literacy Council