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. Purification makes the language conform to a version of the language perceived as 'purer'.
Note that language reforms occur at a punctual point in time; this article does not discuss changes in languages that took place over several centuries, such as the Great Vowel Shift.
Read more about Language Reform: Simplification, Purification, Examples, Instances in Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words language and/or reform:
“Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon destroyed, but the poem survives.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One point in my public life: I did all I could for the reform of the civil service, for the building up of the South, for a sound currency, etc., etc., but I never forgot my party.... I knew that all good measures would suffer if my Administration was followed by the defeat of my party. Result, a great victory in 1880. Executive and legislature both completely Republican.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)