How come the English never tried for a spelling reform? Such reforms were implemented both in Sweden and Germany to simplify spelling. Like the article says, bear really should be spelled bair.
Maybe because English doesn’t have a “central authority” as opposed to for instance French with the Academie Francaise? That makes reforms difficult/impossible.
Good luck getting the Americans, Canadians, British, Indians, and Australians to all agree on something.
I mean, we already disagree on spelling for some words, the name for the letter 'Z', and what to call dwellings in multi-family properties, so we're not off to a great start...
When the German spelling reform was enacted in the German Empire in 1902, German was spoken in many countries outside of it. In fact, it rivaled English as the Lingua franca for the scientific world.
We have tried spelling reform, at least a dozen times. They tend not to stick, however, perhaps in large part because radical changes that impact the spelling of nearly every single word tend to engender a lot of resistance. Smaller changes (such as changing hiccough to hiccup in American English, or through to thru) are more successful.
I disagree, "bear" should be spelled "bear" and "air" should be spelled "ear". "Ear" should be spelled "iar". Basically, a phonetic alphabet.