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The words to describe what you want are "Orthographic reform". There will be no further English orthographic reform. The last successful reform was Webster in t
by tialaramex 3y ago
The words to describe what you want are "Orthographic reform". There will be no further English orthographic reform. The last successful reform was Webster in the 19th century. Webster didn't make drastic changes, yet he's why Americans and British people spell words differently centuries later.
Changes to orthography are much harder once you have printing and then again once you have mass literacy, because now your Flag Day applies to literally all of the humans who use the affected language, and humans hate change. They'd probably lynch you, except that you can't succeed so they needn't bother.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- School-Cotton 3y agoThere have been many successful orthographic reforms in many languages, including recently (1996 for German). It probably can’t succeed in English, because no English-speaking country has any culture or history of state language regulation, and even if they did, it’d be tough to get them all to cooperate. Also, the most powerful English-speaking country is unable to meaningfully reform anything because of its deadlocked and hyper-polarized political system. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible in general. For German only Germany, Austria and Switzerland had to agree, all of which, unlike the US, have normally functioning political and administrative systems.