Yes. In British English, one problem with any sort of spelling reform is that the pronunciations of many words have significant regional variations. For example, in a Southern English accent, words like Bath and Castle are pronounced with a long vowel (almost as if they were spelt 'Barth and 'Carstle') compared with the much shorter Northern English versions ('baf', 'cassl').
To pick a particular pronunciation-based spelling of words would therefore be to prefer one region over another. This would at least trigger a monumental North vs. South argument, assuming that the plans survived the inevitable knee-jerk reactions / incredulity of the usual media suspects.
Probably best if we stick to arguing about daylight saving time, or changes to the format of cricket matches.
There are a few changes that I believe are universal. I'm thinking hard/soft "c" becoming "k"/"s" and soft "g" becoming "j". I don't think I've heard any dialects where there's a difference between whether you pronounce the "c" in a word as hard or soft.
But then again, those rules are pretty standard (c/g before e/i [the "skinny vowels"]) are almost always soft and they are hard otherwise. If you need a soft "c" sound before an "a" then you just use the letter "s". So maybe it's not even worth the effort.
> I don't think I've heard any dialects where there's a difference between whether you pronounce the "c" in a word as hard or soft.
Um, yes, I can't think of regular words where a "c" changes.
<thinks a bit more>
Place names. Place names - at least in England - can have significant differences between spelling and pronunciation, and the locals will often use or be aware of a local pronunciation that isn't obvious to outsiders. Examples include Bicester ('bister'), Leicester ('lester'), Salisbury ('solsbry'), Tottenham ('totnam') and many others. It's not quite the same effect as with dialects but it certainly complicates spelling reform.
People also fucking haaaate changes in language. Especially older people.
I had a 85 year old (yes) technical writing professor in college who insisted that we do our papers using the "Queen's English" that he learned growing up in Catholic school. He even went so far as to write a damn book outlining his rules for English writing because none of the existing style guides out there matched his view of the language.
You'll never get people like that to adopt any sort of change to the language.
That's not universal at all. Many languages have spelling reform every couple of decades. French spelling was updated in 1991 and German in 1996. Dutch was reformed in 1996 and 2006.
I think it's easier when there's a single polity that represents the "entirety" of that languages speaking community. Nobody controls English in the same way - I'd say the US and UK have equal claim to being able to formalize language changes, but good luck getting 2 billion people to follow them.
I think for those languages (I know French and German have them, unsure about Polish) there is a central body which "controls" the language, meanwhile in English we don't have one.
There is one for Polish but I think English speakers overestimate the power such bodies have over people :)
The only power they have is influencing the way kids are taught at school. Everything else changes by social pressure and exposure - most media choose to follow the new convention and people get used to it over time.
The changes are very gradual - the only big one I remember was in 90s - changing how "not" was written with adjectives and adverbs. The rules got much simpler so few people complained.
So the only power such bodies have is being able to influence the entirety of the next generation of the speakers of the language? That's surely some amount of power that nobody holds whatsoever on the English language. Israel was able to use the educational system to revive a millenia-dead old language, that's quite a lot of power.
I meant the direct influence would only be noticeable after decades, but because of media and social pressure after a few years most adult people switched.
