A couple of things to make German more consistent.
Most notably, the use of “ß” (the sharp s or sz [pronounced es-zed]) was adapted. Words with a short vocal cannot be followed by an “ß” now and have to be followed by an “ss”.
Some words affected:
that: daß -> dass
castle: Schloß -> Schloss
This rule was in use in Austria-Hungary from 1879 -1901 by the way.
Another change was allowing the use of triple letters for combined words:
There were a couple more changes with some exceptions for well-established words & some of the more controversial changes were retracted in 2006 but all in all it was a success.
A couple of things to make German more consistent.
Most notably, the use of “ß” (the sharp s or sz [pronounced es-zed]) was adapted. Words with a short vocal cannot be followed by an “ß” now and have to be followed by an “ss”.
Some words affected:
that: daß -> dass
castle: Schloß -> Schloss
This rule was in use in Austria-Hungary from 1879 -1901 by the way.
Another change was allowing the use of triple letters for combined words:
For example:
Ship journey = Schiff + Fahrt => Schifffahrt ≠ Schiffahrt (old)
There were a couple more changes with some exceptions for well-established words & some of the more controversial changes were retracted in 2006 but all in all it was a success.
The Wikipedia article does a better job at explaining some of the detail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of_1996
Wow. Thanks for the explanation and the link.