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Aspelling reform is a deliberate, often authoritatively sanctioned or mandated change tospelling rules. Proposals for such reform are fairly common, and over the years, many languages have undergone such reforms. Recent high-profile examples are theGerman orthography reform of 1996 and the on-offPortuguese spelling reform of 1990, which is still being ratified.

There are various goals which may drive such reforms: facilitatingliteracy and internationalcommunication, making etymology clearer, or foraesthetic or political reasons.

Opposition is often based upon concern that old literature will become inaccessible, the presumed suppression of regional accents, the need to learn the new spellings, making etymology less clear, or simple conservatism based on concern over unforeseen effects. Reforms which mainly eliminate needless difficulties ought to take account of such arguments. Reform efforts are further hampered by habit and, for many languages, a lack ofa central authority to set new spelling standards.

Spelling reform may also be associated with wider discussion about theofficial script, as well aslanguage planning andlanguage reform.

Orthographic reform may be reverted. InRomanian, the letterâ waseliminated in 1953 but reintroduced in 1993.

In languages written with a phonetic script (such as analphabet,syllabary,abugida or, to a lesser extent,abjad), one might expect that there would be a close match of the script or spelling with thespoken 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 differently. In cases where spelling takes account ofgrammatical features, these too may become inconsistent.

People who usenon-standard spelling often suffer from adverse opinions, as a person's mastery of standard spelling is often equated to their level of formal education or intelligence. Spelling is easier in languages with more or less consistent spelling systems, such asFinnish,Serbian,Italian andSpanish, owing either to the fact that pronunciation in these languages has changed relatively little since the establishment of their spelling systems, or the fact thatnon-phonemic etymological spellings have been replaced withphonemic unetymological spellings as pronunciation changed. Guessing the spelling of a word is more difficult after pronunciation changes significantly, thus yielding anon-phonetic etymological spelling system such asIrish orFrench. These spelling systems are still 'phonemic' (rather than 'phonetic') since pronunciation can be systematically derived from spelling, although the converse (i.e. spelling from pronunciation) may not be possible.English is an extreme example of adefective orthography in which spelling cannot be systematically derived from pronunciation, but it also has the more unusual problem that pronunciation cannot be systematically derived from spelling.

Spelling reforms have been proposed for various languages over the years; these have ranged from modest attempts to eliminate particular irregularities (such asSR1 orInitial Teaching Alphabet) through more far-reaching reforms (such asCut Spelling) to attempts to introduce a fullphonemic orthography, like theShavian alphabet or its revised version,Quikscript, the latestDevaGreek alphabet,^[1] theLatinization of Turkish orhangul inKorea.

Redundancy ofletters is often an issue in spelling reform, which prompts the "Economic Argument"—significant cost savings in the production materials over time—as promulgated byGeorge Bernard Shaw.

The idea of phonemic spelling has also been criticized as it would hidemorphological similarities between words with differing pronunciations, thus obscuring their meanings. It is also argued that when people read, they do not try to work out the series of sounds composing each word, but instead they recognize words either as a whole or as a short series of meaningful units (for examplemorphology might be read asmorph+ology, rather than as a longer series ofphonemes). In a system of phonetic spelling, these morphemes become less distinct, due to the various pronunciations ofallomorphs. For example, in English spelling, mostpast participles are spelled with-ed, even though its pronunciation can vary (compareraised andlifted).

One of the difficulties in introducing a spelling reform is how to reflect different pronunciations, often linked to regions or classes. If the reform seeks to be totally phonemic in a model dialect, speakers of other dialects will find conflicts with their own usage.

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• The need to learn the new spellings.^[2]
• The supposed need to reprint books and other publications in the new spellings.
• The continued need to learn the old spellings, as older books will exist for some time.
• The need to decide between conflicting proposals. One may even end up with inconsistent adoption between speech communities.
• If spellings are changed to more closely match pronunciation, then their etymology may become more opaque, and diverge from spellings of related words in the same language or in other languages,^[2] and also from the pronunciation of other dialects, making the text more opaque for speakers of those languages and dialects.
• Confusion during the transition period.^[2]
• Literacy mostly depends on access to education, rather than on the simplicity of a writing system. For example, even though Spanish spelling is much simpler than that of English, the US still has a higher literacy rate than Nicaragua.

Bulgarian underwent a spelling reform in 1945, following the Russian model. Several Cyrillic alphabets with 28 to 44 letters were used in the beginning and middle of the 19th century during the effort to codify Modern Bulgarian until an alphabet with 32 letters, proposed by Marin Drinov, gained prominence in the 1870s. The alphabet of Marin Drinov was used until the orthographic reform of 1945, when the letters yat (uppercase Ѣ, lowercase ѣ) and yus (uppercase Ѫ, lowercase ѫ) were removed from the alphabet, reducing the number of letters to 30.

In the 1950s, the Language Reform Committee of the People's Republic of China devised theHanyu Pinyin 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 theWade-Giles system,Gwoyeu Romatzyh developed byYuen Ren Chao, andLatinxua Sin Wenz) have become rarely used.

The Republic of China (Taiwan) continued to use Wade-Giles romanization until the turn of the 21st century, when theTongyong 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 has undergone a series ofmajor spelling reforms beginning in 1804—with varying levels of official backing and popular acceptance acrossDutch-speaking areas.

TheDutch Language Union, founded in 1980 by the Netherlands and Belgium, is now the source of official reforms. In 1995 it issued the"Green Booklet" reform, and in 2005 the spelling changed again.

An 1879 bulletin by the US Spelling Reform Association, written mostly using reformed spellings

An 1880 bulletin, written wholly in reformed spelling

English spelling containsmany irregularities for various reasons. English has generally preserved the original spelling when borrowing words, and even more importantly, English began to be widely written and printed during theMiddle English period: the later development ofmodern English included aGreat Vowel Shift and many other changes inphonology, yet the older spellings, which are no longer phonetic, have been kept. On the other hand, many words were refashioned to reflect their Latin or Greeketymology. For example, for "debt" earlyMiddle English wrotedet/dette, with theb being standardized in spelling in the 16th century, after its Latin etymondebitum; similarly forquer/quere, which was respelled aschoir in the 17th century, modelled on Greek χορόςchorus; in both cases, the pronunciation was not changed.^[3]

Modern English has anywhere from 14 to 22vowel anddiphthongphonemes, depending ondialect, and 26 or 27consonant phonemes. A simple phoneme-letter representation of this language within the 26 letters of theEnglish alphabet is impossible. Therefore, most spelling reform proposals include multi-lettergraphemes, as does current English spelling (for example the first two phonemes of "sheep"/ˈʃiːp/ are represented by thedigraphs⟨sh⟩,/ʃ/, and⟨ee⟩,/iː/, respectively).Diacritic marks and use of new letter shapes like Ʒʒ have also formed part of spelling reform proposals. The most radical approaches suggest replacing the Latin alphabet with a writing system designed for English, such as theDeseret alphabet orShavian alphabet.

Critics have claimed that a consistent phonemically based system would be impractical: for example, phoneme distribution differs betweenBritish English andAmerican English; furthermore, while EnglishReceived Pronunciation features about 20 vowels, some non-native dialects of English have 10 or even fewer. A phonemic system would therefore not be universal.

A number of proposals have been made to reform English spelling. Some were proposed byNoah Webster early in the 19th century. He was in part concerned to distinguish American from British usage. Some of his suggestions resulted in thedifferences between American and British spelling.

In 1990,a substantial reform ordered by theFrench 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 inFrance,Belgium, andQuebec in 2004, but it has not yet been widely adopted. The 2012 version ofLarousse incorporates all of the changes. The 2009 version ofLe Petit Robert incorporates most of the changes. There are 6000 words, including words which were not part of the 1990 reform, for example,charrette orcharette, based on chariot. As of 16 March 2009, several major Belgian publishing groups have begun to apply the new spellings in their online publications.

German spelling was officially unified in 1901 and certain older spelling patterns were updated: for instance some occurrences of "th" were changed to "t".

In 1944 a spelling reform was due to be introduced, but it ultimately came to nothing because ofWorld War II.

Even though German spelling was already more consistent than English or French spelling, theGerman-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-calledRechtschreibreform was subject to dispute, and polls consistently showed a majority against the new spelling. In summer 2004, various newspapers and magazines returned to the old spelling, and in March 2006, the most controversial changes ofRechtschreibreform were reverted. Therefore German media outlets which had formerly opposed the changes began to use the new spelling.

The classical, medieval, and early modern polytonic orthography inheritedarchaisms fromAncient Greek, which have been eliminated or simplified in the modernmonotonic orthography. See alsoKatharevousa.

Indonesian underwent spelling reforms in1947 and1972, after which its spelling was more consistent with the form ofthe language spoken in Malaysia (i.e.Malaysian).

The first of these changes (oe tou) 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 theDutch language, still survive in proper names.

The original Japanesekanasyllabaries were a purely phonetic representation used for writing theJapanese language when they were invented around 800 AD as a simplification of Chinese-derivedkanji characters. However, the syllabaries were not completely codified and alternate letterforms, orhentaigana, existed for many sounds until standardization in 1900. In addition, due tolinguistic drift the pronunciation of many Japanese words changed, mostly in a systematic way, from theclassical 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 officiallyadopted 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.

Malay underwent spelling reforms in 1972, after which its spelling was more consistent with the form of the language spoken in Indonesia (i.e.Indonesian).

These changes were a part of an officially mandated spelling reform in 1972. Some of the old spellings, which were more closely derived from theEnglish language, still survive in proper names.

Before Norway became independent in 1905, theNorwegian 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 preferred by traditionalists and reformers, depending on social class, urbanization, ideology, education and dialect. The 2005 reform reintroduced traditional spellings which had been abolished by earlier spelling reforms. Seldom-used spellings were also excluded.

The medieval spelling of Portuguese was mostly phonemic, but, from theRenaissance on, many authors who admiredclassical culture began to use an etymological orthography. However, spelling reforms inPortugal (1911) andBrazil (1943) reverted the orthography to phonemic principles (with some etymological distinctions maintained). Later reforms (Brazil, 1971; Portugal, 1945 and 1973) have aimed mainly at three goals: to eliminate the few remnants of redundant etymological spelling, to reduce the number of words marked with diacritics and hyphens, and to bring the Brazilian spelling standard and the Portuguese spelling standard (used in all the Portuguese speaking countries, except Brazil) closer to each other.

The goal of unifying the spelling was finally achieved with a multi-lateral agreement in 1990, signed by every Portuguese-speaking country, but not ratified by Angola as of 2014. The implementation of the new rules in Brazil and Portugal began only in 2009, with a transition period of six years. The agreement is used by the government and the teaching realms, as well as many of the press and publishing houses of both countries, and by state-related institutions. Because Portuguese in Portugal differs from Brazilian Portuguese, the reform has led to new differences in spellings which were formerly the same.

None of the other Portuguese speaking countries that have signed the agreement have implemented it as of 2014. In Portugal there is still some resistance to it and in 2013 the Portuguese Parliament formed a workgroup to analyse the situation and propose solutions.

During the transition period, four spellings will coexist: the official Portuguese spelling before the reform (used in all Portuguese speaking countries in Africa, Asia and Oceania, as used in Portugal by the people), the official Brazilian spelling before the reform (used in Brazil only), the Portuguese spelling after the reform (used by the government and its institutions, some media and publishers in translated books), and the Brazilian spelling after the reform (used by the government, media and publishers in translated books). The latter two systems are regulated by the same agreement, but differ somewhat because of differing pronunciation of the same words in Portugal and Brazil.

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 theCyrillic script by reason of ecclesiastical tradition, and those rendered obsolete by changes inphonetics.

WhenPeter 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 theRussian Revolution. The Russianorthography was simplified by eliminating four obsolete letters (ѣ, і, ѵ, andѳ) and the archaic usage of the letterъ (calledyer, orhard sign) at the ends of words, which had originally represented a vowel with a sound similar toschwa, but had become silent by the Middle Ages.

Within the South Slavic languages, which form a dialect continuum, theSerbo-Croatian language itself consists of four literary standards:Serbian,Croatian,Bosnian andMontenegrin. It went through a series of major spelling reforms in the early to middle 19th century. Before then, two distinct writing traditions had evolved. Western dialects had been written using the Latin alphabet, while eastern (Serbian) had been using an archaic form of theCyrillic script. Despite many attempts, there was no universally agreed-upon spelling standard employing the Latin alphabet, and the Cyrillic version was considered outdated.

A series of reforms have been undertaken to set the standards, in order to bring the writing system to parity with spoken language. The reform movement was spearheaded by Croatian linguistLjudevit Gaj for the Latin-based writing system, and Serbian reformerVuk Stefanović Karadžić for the Cyrillic version.

The reform efforts were coordinated in order to correlate the two writing systems, culminating in theVienna Literary Agreement which has remained in service since. The Slovene language, not part of the Serbo-Croatian dialect continuum, was also covered by the same reform movement. After World War II and the codification of literaryMacedonian, the same system has been extended with some modifications.

All of these writing systems exhibit a high degree of correspondence between language sounds and letters, making them highly phonetic and very consistent.

TheSpanish Royal Academy (RAE) reformed the orthographical rules of Spanish from 1726 to 1815, resulting in most of the modern conventions. There have been initiatives since then to further reform the spelling of Spanish: from the mid-19th century,Andrés Bello succeeded in making his proposal official in several South American countries, but they later returned to the standard of the Spanish Royal Academy.

Another initiative, the Rational Phonetic Hispanoamerican Orthography (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 orhis wife's.Gabriel García Márquez raised the issue of reform during a congress atZacatecas, and drew attention to the issue, but no changes were made. However, the academies continue to update the reform.

• Armenian: SeeSpelling reform of the Armenian language 1922–1924.
• Bengali:Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar removed archaic letters used for writingSanskrit loanwords (ৠ, ঌ, ৡ, ৱ) and added three new letters (ড়, ঢ়, য়) to reflect contemporary Bengali pronunciation.
• Catalan: Thespelling of the Catalan language was standardized, mostly byPompeu Fabra in the early 20th century. In 2016 the official regulating bodies of the language, theInstitute for Catalan Studies and theValencian Language Academy, published a controversial spelling reform that eliminated some diacritical marks. Both spellings coexisted between 2016 and 2020, when the new spelling became the only acceptable one.
• Chinese:Simplified Chinese characters replacedtraditional characters inMainland China,Malaysia andSingapore, although traditional characters are still used inTaiwan,Hong Kong andMacau.
• Czech: The spelling of the Czech language was reformed and regularised as early as the 15th century through the publication of the manuscriptOrthographia bohemica.
• Danish: There were spelling reforms to theDanish orthography in 1872 and 1889 (with some changes in 1892). In a 1948 reform, the Danish 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 letterÅ/å. The double-a digraph is still widely used in personal names and is optional in a few placenames. In 1980,W was recognized as a distinct letter. Before that, it was considered a variation ofV for purposes of collation.
• Dhivehi: Replaced writing Arabic loanwords inArabic script tothikijehithaana, 20th century.
• Filipino: SeeFilipino orthography.
• Galician: SeeReintegrationism.
• Georgian: In the 19th century the Georgian alphabet underwent removal of five letters (ჱ, ჳ, ჲ, ჴ, ჵ).
• Greenlandic: The spelling reform of 1973 replaced the letterkra (Kʼ / ĸ) by Q and removed diacritics by changing a number of spelling conventions.
• Hebrew: The Hebrew language has two systems of spelling – with and without vowel marks, calledNiqqud. 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. TheAcademy 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.^{[dubious –discuss]} SeeHebrew spelling.
• Korean: Thehangul alphabet completely replacedhanja ideograms in the Korean language in theNorth, whilehanja still sees very limited use for clarification and abbreviation in theSouth.
• Latvian: Old versions ofLatvian orthography were German-based, they were replaced by a more appropriate system at the beginning of the 20th century. The Latvian language discarded the digraphUo in 1914, the lettersŌ andŖ in 1946, and the digraphCh in 1957.
• Polish: SeeHistory of Polish orthography.
• Quechua andAymara: SeeQuechuan and Aymaran spelling shift.
• Swedish: The last major reform ofSwedish 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 phrasehvarken af silfver eller rödt guld was now spelledvarken av silver eller rött guld. Some people, particularly teachers, had called for an even more radical reform that would also homogenise the spellings of the/j/,/ɕ/,/ɧ/ and/ɔ/ sounds, which to this day remain highly diverse in Swedish, and replace theck letter sequence withkk. These more radical reforms met opposition from linguists at an early stage.^[2]
• Thai: The two letters "ฃ" and "ฅ" were discarded in 1892, being uniformly replaced by "ข" and "ค", respectively. Amore extensive spelling reform was carried out in 1942, which eliminated a larger number of letters and altered the spelling of several words, but was abandoned shortly after in 1944.
• Turkish: TheTurkish alphabet replaced theOttoman Turkish script in theTurkish language.^[4]
• Venetian: The Venetian language has never had an official orthography, because it was considered a dialect until recent times, and also now many do not consider it as a "distinct" language. Many otherlanguages of Italy are in the same situation. Regardless, there are some attempts to establish a standard orthography for Venetian, like theGrafia Veneta Unitaria ("shared Venetian spelling"), aspelling created by a committee convened by the regionVeneto in 1995.
• Vietnamese: In the Vietnamese language, theVietnamese alphabet replaced the earlierChữ Nôm system in the 1920s.^{[citation needed]}

• False etymology
• Language change
• Language planning
• Language policy
• Language reform
• Official script
• Otto Basler
• Simplified Chinese characters

• István Fodor and Clause Hagège (eds):La Réforme des langues. Histoire et avenir. Language reform. History and future. Sprachreform. Geschichte und Zukunft. Buske, Hamburg 1983–1989
• Edite Estrela:A Questão Ortográfica: Reforma e Acordos da Língua Portuguesa. Editorial Notícias, Lisbon 1993

• The English 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 byRichard O. Collin atOmniglot
• "The Standardization of Irish Spelling: an Overview", by Muiris Ó Laoire
• Writing Systems Reforms and Revolutions
• American Literacy Council (archived)
• American Literacy Council (Retrieved 17 January 2022)

• Spelling reform

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