Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Germany had a major spelling reform (the "Rechtschreibreform") in 1996.
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It was a
coordinated effort by all German-speaking countries, actually, also including Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and parts of Belgium and Italy (Southern Tyrol), and it's slightly more complicated than that, with a long transitional period (where it was mostly ignored except in school), two major revisions and a seemingly constant back and forth. The prescriptivist approach (there's one correct way to spell it, look it up in the "Duden") seems to be on its way out, with many major publishers using their own house styles and most dictionaries listing multiple correct spellings.
The last reform before that was in 1901, and while the spellings of some words have changed, texts generally remain perfectly readable if you can read over the occasional (now superfluous) "silent h", as it were.