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See Meder (1997) for an informative comparative discussion of 19th-century attempts to standardise the various regional legal systems, on the one hand, and orthographic guidelines, on the other. For a discussion of efforts to specify a standard pronunciation for German, see von Polenz (1999: 255– 63). 3. There are numerous texts that deal with the historical issues in far greater detail than will be possible or desirable here. For the sake of brevity and clarity, for example, I shall avoid repeating the linguistic details of each of the various reform proposals put forward from the 19th century onwards.

It was at this point that the KMK formally confirmed its unpublished ruling of 1950 that, until such time as revised norms were available, the 1901 guidelines – together with any subsequent official amendments – remained valid (see Bulletin der Bundesregierung, 20 December 1955). 11 It was in this way that Duden, a private corporation, achieved its de facto status as the official arbiter in matters orthographic for the subsequent four decades (Augst & Schaeder, 1997a: 5– 11). The literature dealing with these events offers a range of interpretations of the intentions that lie behind Steiner and Grebe’s actions, both of whom had participated in the Stuttgart talks.

The so-called ‘Rust reform’ proposed a number of changes to German orthography, for example, the replacement in foreign loans (or, more accurately, items perceived to be of foreign origin) of the digraphs kphl, kthl and krhl with the germanicised variants kfl, ktl and krl, respectively; the 30 Spelling Trouble? reduction of three consecutive consonants to two in compound forms; the separation of verb forms such as Rad fahren (previously radfahren – to cycle); the division of syllables according to phonetic as opposed to etymological criteria; and the abolition of the comma before the coordinating conjunctions und (and) and oder (or) (Nerius, 2000a: 374).