Reform of orthographies

An orthography needs reform when people have difficulty reading it, or when it is unacceptable for some reason. These again are the two main criteria of usability and acceptability. The longer an orthography has been in existence, the more literature is likely to exist in it, and the more inertia it has, and so the more difficult it is to change. To change an orthography requires some sort of sponsorship and endorsement of the process from an authoritative body, whether a governmental body, a local language committee, or some other body. Once the decision is made, the factors in developing a new orthography, listed on this page, are also relevant for reforming an orthography.

• Karan, Elke. 2006. "Writing System Development and Reform: A Process." MA thesis, University of North Dakota. https://commons.und.edu/theses/3004
• Kuznetsova, Natalia, Olga Kuznetsova & Valentin Vydrin. 2009. Modeling a new Guro orthography. In Peter K. Austin, Oliver Bond, Monik Charette, David Nathan & Peter Sells (eds) Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory 2. London: SOAS.
  13-14 November 2009 School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
• Roberts, John R. 1991. "Orthography reform in Amele." Notes on Literacy 17.4:1–20; 18.1:1–31. (originally published in two parts)
• Schroeder, Leila. 2016. When the orthography of the local language is not yet standardized or requires further review in order to adequately represent the linguistic features of the language, how should this challenge be handled in the program? In Trudell, B. and Young, C. (eds.) 2016. Good Answers to Tough Questions in Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education. SIL International.
• Thomas, Dorothy M. 1989. Changing the Northern Khmer orthography. Notes on Literacy 57:47–59.
• Wiesemann, Ursula. 1989. Orthography matters. Notes on Literacy 57:14–21.