# Spelling reforms



## amikama

Please tell me about spelling reforms (if any) that your language underwent in the past (let's say, the last 100 years). I would like to know:
- what was changed under the reform
- how many words, roughly, were affected by the reform
- whether it was successful or not
- what was the reaction of the general public to the reform
- how long it took to implement the reform since it was proposed for the first time
- etc.

In addition, any information about planned reforms in the near future will also be welcomed.


Thanks,
amikama.


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## Whodunit

Germany is obviously, in my opinion, the most "spelling reform friendly" country. There were so many script and spelling changes in the last 200 years. Let me answer and speak for German:



			
				amikama said:
			
		

> - what was changed under the reform many words, comma rules, case (upper and lower cases) rules, separable words became "one word words" and vice versa
> - how many words, roughly, were affected by the reform (ten) thousands
> - whether it was successful or not that's a moot point, I can't say
> - what was the reaction of the general public to the reform different, many older (wink to MrMagoo ) people refused to accept them, many people use the new one
> - how long it took to implement the reform since it was proposed for the first time from the first mention on? About 10 years, I suppose
> - etc.
> 
> In addition, any information about planned reforms in the near future will also be welcomed.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> amikama.


 
There're dozens of German threads on WR and on the Net dealing with that subject. Let's see if I can find some good sources in English.

PS: What about your language?


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## Outsider

Can you read Portuguese?


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:
			
		

> Can you read Portuguese?


 
Why? Isn't it possible to describe it in English?


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## Outsider

If Amikama could read Portuguese, I could point him to some books that explain the history of our spelling reforms, and probably answer all of his questions. If not, I can try to write a post with what I know about them, but it will take me some time, and some things, such as "how many words, roughly, were affected by the reform", I just don't know. Either way, I guess I might as well point him to the Wikipedia's entry on Portuguese spelling reform, and their entry on Portuguese spelling.


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## Whodunit

This may maybe answer some of your questions.


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## amikama

Outsider said:
			
		

> If Amikama could read Portuguese, I could point him to some books that explain the history of our spelling reforms, and probably answer all of his questions. If not, I can try to write a post with what I know about them, but it will take me some time, and some things, such as "how many words, roughly, were affected by the reform", I just don't know. Either way, I guess I might as well point him to the Wikipedia's entry on Portuguese spelling reform, and their entry on Portuguese spelling.


Unfortunately, I don't know Portuguese. But thank you very much for the links!  



			
				Whodunit said:
			
		

> This may maybe answer some of your questions.


Thank you too!


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## Outsider

The Wikipedia's entries are a bit poor. Perhaps I can tell you a little more about the spelling reforms of Portuguese. Several were made during the 20th century. The first ones served to set an orthographic standard to be promoted by the government and used in public schools. Up until then, Portuguese had had no official standard. Each author wrote as he chose.

Many authors of the preceding centuries had used an etymological (and sometimes only pseudo-etymological) spelling, similar to that of French and English, with lots of _ch, ph, th, y, nn, pp_ and other symbols that had no phonetic significance. For example, the word for "pharmacy" was spelled _pharmacia_. The authors of the first spelling reforms favored a more phonetic spelling, closer to that of Spanish and Italian, and more in line with the original, Medieval spelling of Portuguese. 

The spellings instituted then by Portugal and its colonies, on one hand, and Brazil, on the other, were slightly different. Critics argue that this makes it harder to circulate books between Brazil and other Portuguese-speaking countries, and also more cumbersome to teach Portuguese to foreigners.

The subsequent reforms had the following three main objectives:

1) To eliminate some remains of etymological spelling.

2) To reduce the number of words with diacritics.

3) To bring the spellings of Portugal and Brazil closer together. Complete unification of the two spllings has not yet been achieved. The Wikipedia talks about the most recent proposal, which however has not yet gone into effect.

Failed reforms: 

In the forties, Portuguese authorities attempted to unify the two systems by having Brazilians accept certain spelling conventions which were in accordance with the European pronunciation, but somewhat inconsistent with Brazilian pronunciation. Brazil rejected this.

In the eighties, a proposal which would achieve unification by eliminating most of the diacritics in the language met with fierce opposition by the Portuguese media and public opinion, and was thus abandoned.


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## Outsider

The spelling reform of Turkish. The whole website is interesting.

The Standard Orthography of the Tetum language (pdf).

Brief overview of spelling reforms in English.


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## JLanguage

Outsider said:
			
		

> Brief overview of spelling reforms in English.


 
There haven't really been any major spelling reforms in English. Noah Webster published a dictionary in the early 19th century that simplified a number of spellings in order to differentiate American English from British English.

From Wikipedia:
`





> Examples:
> _musick_ became _music_ (_musick_ spelling is no longer in use today)
> _publick_ became _public_ (_publick_ spelling is no longer in use today)
> _cheque_ became _check_
> _colour_ became _color_
> _plough_ became _plow_
> _favour_ became _favor_
> _phantasy_ became _fantasy_ (_phantasy_ is now only used as an old-fashioned affectation)


 
However for the most part English spelling has changed very little in the past 200-250 years.


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## amikama

Outsider said:
			
		

> The spelling reform of Turkish. The whole website is interesting.
> 
> The Standard Orthography of the Tetum language (pdf).
> 
> Brief overview of spelling reforms in English.


 
Thank you, again, for the links!


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## Hakro

In Finnish, there has been practically no spelling reform. I believe it's due to the fact that Finnish is pronounced as it's written, under certain rules of course. It means that any Finn can pronounce without problems, absolutely correctly a word that he has never heard before.
There has been some changes in writing words together or separated, and usually the new recommendation is to write separated. For example, 50 years ago 'niinkuin' ("as if") was always written in one word, but nowadays it's recommended to write 'niin kuin'.


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## nitad54448

Hi, 
Quite some big reforms were made in Romanian, I will not list them here.  after the 2dn world war for political reasons (there was a stupid claim that romanian was slavic) many words were changed : like many "a" in "i", etc to remove the latin origin :
Paine (old romanian) -> Piine (communist one), etc
Fortunately this has been corrected after 1989 !
regards


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## Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

The modern Czech orthography was defined by a series of spelling reforms during the 1st half of the 19th Century. The orthography used before, created by the protestant Brotherly Unity (Jednota bratrská) and based on Jan Hus' orthography, is still recognizable as Czech, but also very visibly different.

There were three main "corrections":

First came the "analogical correction" (oprava analogická) in 1817, which consisted of a change in the rules of writing i/y after c, s, and z, by _analogy_ with other consonants, and replacing the initial v (pronounced ) with u. Ex.: včený => učený, cyzý sýla => cizj sjla.

Second, the "space-conserving correction" (oprava skladná), whereby j (pronounced [i:]) was replaced with í and g (pronounced [j]) with j. That way, the letter G could be used to spell the [g] sound, which doesn't appear in native Czech words but is plentiful in Latin and Greek words, of which Czech had absorbed many by that point in its revival. In addition, the spelling of the diphthong ey was changed to ej. This was in 1842. Examples: neywětšj => nejwětší, Mág => Máj.

Finally, in 1849, a third reform was promulgated (unofficially at first) whereby w (pronounced [v]) was replaced with v and the diphthong au (pronounced [ou]) was changed to ou.

Further reforms were proposed, including changing the digraph ch (the only true digraph preserved in Czech since the most ancient times) to something else, but nothing became of it - in particular because typographers would have had to cast new characters.

Since then, occassional spelling reforms concerned only specific words or groups of words (e.g. marking vowel length in some suffixes, writing some words together or separately, etc.). The most important spelling reforms in the 20th century consisted of the gradual assimilation of loan words: double consonants and silent h's were abolished, vowel quantity began to be marked, the spelling of s's and z's was phonetised. Ex.: hypothesa => hypotéza, diskusse => diskuse => diskuze (it should really be a 's', but the ill timing of the reforms caused confusion which gave rise to the 'z'-form, which became so widespread that it is now accepted), chamotte => šamot, etc.


 For a good idea of how the reforms changed the graphic look of Czech text, compare a snippet from Karel Hynek Mácha's poem Máj (May) as it was published in 1836 (already after the first reform), with a modern transcript:

_Karel Hynek Mácha: Mág
_ _Byl pozdnj wečer – prwnj mág –
__Wečernj mág – byl lásky čas.__
Hrdliččin zwal ku lásce hlas,__
Kde borowý zawáněl hág.
__O lásce šeptal tichý mech;__
Kwětaucj strom lhal lásky žel,
__Swau lásku slawjk růži pěl,__
Růžinu gewil wonný wzdech._ 

Karel Hynek Mácha: Máj
 Byl pozdní večer – první máj –
Večerní máj – byl lásky čas.
Hrdliččin zval ku lásce hlas,
Kde borový zaváněl háj.
O lásce šeptal tichý mech;
Kvetoucí strom lhal lásky žel,
Svou lásku slavík růži pěl,
Růžinu jevil vonný vzdech.  

You can google an English translation if you want, I'm not allowed to post links yet.


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## ceann-feachd

Gaelic underwent a few spelling reforms just recently. (in the 80's)

One of them, which I tend to disagree with, was the removal of the acute accent.

Dé, mór, glé, móran, fhéin, et all are now written as dè, mòr, glè, mòran, & fhèin.

I disagree because, formerly, è & é, ò & ó represented different sounds. Now you just have to know, or guess which è or ò sound it is.

A few words had their spelling changed. Like dachaidh is now dachaigh. Some schwa sounds which used to be represented by u are now represented by a. ex: Biobull was changed to Bioball. Also, a few rules were standardized such as to when and when not to hyphenate words.

Like, "an seo" (here) "an siud" (yonder) and "an sin" (there) used to be written as "an-seo" "an-siud" and "an-sin".

All in all, the spelling was made simpler, but I dislike the removal of the acute accent. It made spelling simpler, but made it a bit more difficult to read.

Also, the ending for the past participle is now -te regardless of the "slender to slender, broad to broad rule" So, words like "déanta" for done are now "dèante"

Oh well,

Tha mi a' smaoineachadh nach bu chòir dhomh bhith cho ceannairceach. Tha iad gl*é* mhath, nach eil? 
Co-dhiù, beannachd leibh an-dràsta.

_I think that I shouldn't be so rebellious. They are very good, aren't they?

Anyway, bye for now.
_


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## Mutichou

In French, there was a reform in (I think) 1990.
Circumflex accents are removed (goûter > gouter, boîte > boite), except in conjugations (nous allâmes).
Some diaeresis are moved on the first vowel in words like aiguë > aigüe.
Foreign names have a regular plural (scénario > scénarios instead of scénarii ; match > matchs instead of matches).
But these rules are not applied (especially for accents).


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## Outsider

Nouvelle orthographie


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## gorbatzjov

We just had a small spelling reform that will be official from August 2006, however there are some Dutch people who are trying to keep the old system. The Flemish media and prominent persons have agreed with it. 

It's very difficult to explain what is going to change to people who are non Dutch speakers, but the most important world that will change is "pannekoek" to "pannenkoek" (pancake).

The last major spelling reform was years ago when most k's in the beginning of a word would be written "c".


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## ampurdan

I was about to say that the main reform that Spanish has suffered during the last few years, was the cessation of considering "ch" and "ll" as letters on their own; but I've just find out that this is a misconception. "Ch" and "ll" are still letters on their own in the Spanish alphabet, but since 1994 Spanish dictionaries work with the international latin alphabet, wich means that "ch" is finded under "c" and "ll" under "l".

As for Catalan:
During the 19th century, a great deal of its words could be spelled differently, from forms closer to their ethimological origin (even false ethimologies) to the ones closer to their pronounciation (and, of course, pronounciation was not uniform). In 1913 Catalan was given a somewhat simplified spelling (not as simplified as Italian's). I think that the most eyestrinking change was that of writting plural feminine "-as" to "-es", which was more appropriate to some of the Catalan dialects.


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## bleuboia

Supposedly there was a spelling reform in Brazilian Portuguese, such as in words like "acto>ato"=act and "acção>ação"=action. Mainly because they didn't pronounce the constant, but made the vowel more open than if there wasn't a constant present, and with accent marks to  ex. António and Antônio.


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## MarX

Hi!

In Indonesian there were several spelling reforms.

*oe* replaced by *u*
*tj* by *c*
*dj* by *j*
*j* by *y*

Through these written Indonesian can often look identical to Malaysian.

For example the word for "cat" used to look like *koetjing*/*kutjing* in Indonesian and *kuching* in Malaysian. Now both write *kucing*.

Salam,


MarX


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## Mahaodeh

With the exception of punctuation marks, I don't think there has been any changes in Arabic spelling since adding dots to the letters over a thousand years ago.


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## mataripis

In Pilipino, Spanish and English words changed the spelling of many native words.  But Pilipino, realized that they can use any spelling system as long as the sound and pronounciation do not change. 1.) Davao can be written as "Dabaw" 2.) Mindanao= Mindanaw   3.) Cubao= Kubaw    4.)Espaniol= Espanyol   5.) General= Dyeneral/Jeneral    6.)Philippines= Filipins     7.) Banio= Banyo    8.) Pancit= Pansit     9.) Manga= Mangga


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## apmoy70

In Modern Greek a major spelling reform occured in early '80's and it was the shifting from the Polytonic orthographic system to the system of the simple accent (called Monotonic). Also the simplification of the spelling of foreign loanwords in the language, e.g. in the 19th c. the French loanword _distributeur_ (the device that distributes electric power from the ignition to the spark plugs in our cars) was coined as «ντιστριμπ*υ*τέρ» in Greek; if the word was incorporated into Greek today, we'd calqued it as «ντιστριμπ*ι*τέρ» (note: since early Byzantine times, the pronunciation of «υ» ypsilon is identical with «ι» iota--> /i/ a phenomenon called Iotacism)


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## tFighterPilot

In Hebrew there has been an attempt by the academy of Hebrew language to "Hebrewize" words of Aramaic origin (There are many of them) by replacing the Alef in the end of words with a He. This has not been very successful so far.


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## Explorer41

There were quite major spelling reforms of Russian. One took place during the reign of Peter the Great; another was conducted in 1918; the letter "ё" appeared in 1797 (Nickolai Karamzin suggested it); etc. I don't know much about the first; the main points were that we got rid of several letters and abandoned the Greek-wise shape of the letters for advantage of the Latin-like shape. As for the second, we threw away a few letters (the most  notable and used of them were the letter "Ѣ" ("ять", "yat"), which generally expressed the same vowel as "Е", and the letter "i"; the use of other two pre-1918 letters fluctuated in Russian, it was rare and not consistent), stopped to write "Ъ" at ends of words and changed spelling of neuter and feminine adjectives; also other changes, an analysis of them may be found at this site in French (I don't know if it's always accurate, for example, it seems to me that I saw both the words "маменька" and "маминька" in texts of that era, and I have other doubts, but I believe overall it's fairly good and precise; I can't know though because I never actually learned that rules). There was also a discussion.

As for me, I can read texts written in the 17?? — 1918 orthography very easily (unless the Russian itself is old, which is at some times the case with texts of the XVIII century), but it's very hard for me to read sentences written with letters of the era before Peter the Great.

I think, both reforms were necessary and made a good service for us. Old books were quickly reprinted for the new spelling rules, I think it was not very hard because books get often reprinted anyway. At that time there were no computers who could automatize the job though. Now the Russian spelling is more logical and "phonemic" than it was before; but it still has pitfalls.

The reform of 1918 was prepared since 1901 — 1902 by the Orthographical Committee (Philip Fortunatov was the chairman). Fortunately, the committee declined the etymological principle of spelling (similar to that of English), and it declined the phonetic principle. Instead, the morphological principle (advocated by Fortunatov) was chosen. Of course, the debate about the future of the Russian spelling was conducted long before.

Of course, there were different opinions about the reforms; but we quickly got accustomated to them, as far as I know. The reform of Peter's time caused long fluctuations of spelling though. Also, during the mid of the XX century (1929 — 1960s) a plan to make additional minor reforms circulated, but it was abandoned due to the opposition of people. I have heard people who think Russian spelling needs reforms now; others (including me) oppose them.


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## sound shift

Azeri has had three changes of alphabet in the last one hundred years:

1928 Arabic >>> Latin
1938 Latin >>> Cyrillic
1991 Cyrillic >>> Latin


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## terredepomme

Korean is now written horizontally with spaces.


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