Quotes About Language reform

So the government spent five million dollars on a report to expunge the English language of such words as 'manpower', 'mannerism', 'manoeuvre' etc so any feminists working on the government payroll wouldn't be offended. Which should be very comforting to the next homeless kid sleeping near a manhole cover, thought Les, to know that he is now sleeping next to a personhole cover.

The language marches in step with the executioners. Therefore we must get a new language.

above all, simplify the French language and abolish irregular verbs – a measure that would have rescued countless schoolchildren from the despotism of pernickety pedagogues.

In the year 1915 a series of trivial incidents led some Chinese students in Cornell University to take up the question of reforming the Chinese language.

Webster was a dry, humourless man whose character we can deduce, I think, from the title of his Essay on the Necessity, Advantages and Practicability of Reforming the Mode of Spelling, and of Rendering the Orthography of Words Correspondent to the Pronunciation.

Chairman Mao not only introduced Pinyin in China, but also simplified half the Chinese characters, believing that fewer strokes would enable more people to learn to write the characters.