You probably didn't know that there's been fairly regular spelling reforms in German. The most recent one was in 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German...reform_of_1996 I'm not sure about that one, but I've tried reading some pre-1900 texts (on Gutenberg) and it's quite striking. According to wikipedia, all German-speaking countries adopted the reform, although I'm kind of confused about Switzerland now (which doesn't use the mandated ß). By the way, the article also explains the origin of ß.

And that is all to say, there's been nothing like that in English, which seems to faithfully rely on a spelling standard invented somethere around the year 1000, if I'm not mistaken (or at the latest whenever the King James bible was written - 1500s?). I kind of suspect that the multifold reasons include the fact that all the English-speaking countries would never agree on a common... well, framework to base that around (especially not you, yankees ). And also it's kind of too late. Somewhere in history an appropriate moment was missed when the spelling still followed the language but not quite, when it could be just tweaked to fall in line. Whereas now you might as well invent a new written language to make it at all phonetic...

Okay, I'm rambling. You know, I just got up, it's 6:30, I can't stop thinking about spelling. Happens to everyone, right?