Language reform

Language reform is a type of language planning. Language reforms make big changes to a language. These changes are usually done to make a language simpler to understand or to write. Sometimes changes are done to make the language purer; that is, to get rid of foreign parts of the language, or to get rid of parts of the language that are not grammatical.
Simplification makes the language easier to use. It tries to regularise spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. Purification makes the language similar to a version of the language that people think is more pure.
Sometimes language reforms were done to unite the people speaking the language. For this reason, many language reforms happened in 19th century Europe when there was a rise of nationalist movements.
Simplification.
The most common form of language reform involves changing the orthography of words. This is known as spelling reform. The grammar of a language also may be changed to simplify inflection, syntax, vocabulary and word formation. English for example uses many different prefixes that mean "the opposite of", like "un-", "in-/im-", "a(n)-", "de-". A language reform might suggest using only one prefix to mean "the opposite of", for example "un-". On top of this, there are words such as "good" and "bad" that roughly mean the opposite of each other, but would be better (in terms of simplicity) portrayed as "good" and "ungood", so the word "bad" is not part of the language anymore.
Another good example of what language simplification can do is the word "flammable". Flammable means that something can catch fire easily. Originally the word was "inflammable", from Latin "inflammare" - put something on fire. "In-" is also a prefix that can mean "the opposite of", like with "transparent", "intransparent". Today most instructions use "flammable" rather than "inflammable", in order not to confuse people that the "in-" in this case does not mean the opposite of.
Several major world languages have been subject to big spelling reforms: French (in the 16th, 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries), Spanish (in the 18th century), Portuguese (in 1910, in Portugal, and in 1946 and 1972, in Brazil), German (in 1901/02 and 1996/98) and Russian (in 1728 and 1919).
Purification.
Some people feel that it is bad to change a language. They want to keep a language the way it is now, or they want to take back changes to the language that have been done earlier. Sometimes, purism can make a language more complex, because people add false etymologies:
Examples.
Examples of language reforms are: