I assume that all languages had many of the same problems creating standard spellings that English did.
I’d like to learn more about how they got their spelling so much more standardized than English.
A few, like the now-dead Gothic language, got their spelling standardized by the author of a specific translation of the bible. That translator set the spelling rules.
When and where were the reform movements, say, that standardized Dutch spelling as unique to German (dropping the accents and umlauts in favor of double vowels, etc.)
Or standardization for Spanish or Portuguese. Surely there were different spellings that got leveled by someone with authority.
I am not a linguist, but as far as I know Dutch hass been a seperate language from German since before we have written documents in Dutch. According to the wikipedia article (in Dutch) it never had the same accented and es-zet characters that German has. (Current Dutch does use “french” accents, and “umlauts”, but umlauts are used to indicate borders between syllables that end and start with the same vowel, where in German umlauts indicate a difference in sound - O vs Ö sounds more or less like “Oh” vs “Eh”)
The overall history of Dutch spelling looks pretty interesting. We’ve had 6 different “official” spelling systems since the middle-ages, and the last two reforms at least were attempts at simplifying the system. It doesn’t look like they were completely successful, though But I’m not really qualified to comment on the difference between the development of written Dutch vs English, so hopefully someone else can give us some insights.
This isn’t really about spelling, but Kemal Ataturk changed the alphabet of the Turkish language from Arabic to Roman in an effort to Westernize Turkey. This occurred in the 1920s and 30s, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. (Cite)
The Japanese language circa 1946 had numerous spelling and orthographic problems that were tackled during the period of “democratization” early in the American occupation when active reformers in a number of areas were able to gain active American support for their initiatives and positions of power. Spelling and orthographic reform was described as “democratization of the language” and supported on the basis that it would increase literacy and ease education (although I don’t think those were actually big problems in pre-war Japan).
Although a number of the early reforms were rolled back/undermined/ignored after the end of the occupation, spelling reform proved popular enough that it was left untouched. I have come across some web pages devoted to the re-adoption of the old spellings, but that is very much a fringe position.
But I’m not really qualified to comment on the difference between the development of written Dutch vs English, so hopefully someone else can give us some insights.