language reform
Updating speech systems
Language reform is deliberate effort to change a language's spelling, grammar, vocabulary, or writing system.
Reforms may aim to simplify spelling (English spelling reform proposals), modernize vocabulary, purge foreign influences, or make literacy more accessible.
Some succeed—Turkish switched from Arabic to Latin script in 1928—while others face resistance or fade.
The term also covers efforts to make language more inclusive: gender-neutral language reform.
- standardizationImplementing uniform technical specifications
- EsperantoInvented auxiliary tongue
- grammarLanguage's structural rules
- political correctnessAvoiding exclusionary language
- style guidesWriting convention references
Noah Webster · inclusivity · linguistics · Hangul · purism · lexicon · codification · spelling · spelling bee · syntax · writing · vernacular · nationalism · vocabulary · word choice · modernization · dictionary · orthography
- DutchDutch, Holland, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Rotterdam
- feminismfeminism, feminist theory, gender equality, women's rights, feminist novels
- NorwegianOslo, Bergen, krone, verb conjugation, definite articles
- Balkan HistoryBalkans, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Montenegro
- language historystandardization, orthography, spelling reforms, grammar rules, dictionaries
- Turkish RepublicAnkara, Treaty of Lausanne, Latin alphabet, secularism, secular state
language reformlinguistic purism
Resistance to language change
language preservation · archaism · language revival · classical revival