Andrew Dunbar wrote:

> > "Ceasing to be used" is rather different from "being
> > abolished."
>
> What about the abolition of yat from Russian?
> Plenty didn't agree at the time but it hasn't come
> back yet so it seems to have stuck.

What is "yat," and which round of abolitions was it abolished in? Peter
the Great's? 18th-19th-c. usage? the Soviet reform? Russian has a lot
fewer letters than Old Cyrillic.

> But maybe I'm now creating a new tangent...
>
> It also seems that several spelling reforms in
> Icelandic, Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian have been
> embraced by the speakers. Not always immediately.
> But I'm not informed enough to know if these reforms
> were merely playing catch-up with popular usage.

No, people don't go around changing their spellings (once they've gotten
settled). That's why meddlesome "authorities" think they need to decree
"reforms" every so often -- so as to keep the spelling close to the
changing pronunciation.

Fortunately, no one has such power over English spelling, so written
English remains accessible to speakers of a hugely wide variety of
spoken Englishes. Because the spelling got more-or-less fixed just
before the colonists started going out and planting English, in all its
dialects, around the globe.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...