Now that the German spelling reform is closer to becoming reality, American teachers and students of German will have to deal with a new orthographic reality and consider its impact. In this paper, I will provide a brief historical background of the reform and will then discuss its effect on the teaching and acquisition of German spelling within an English-language context. Finally, after nearly two decades of intensive workby various commissions, after many meetings and intense and often acrimonious public discussions, the reform of the orthographic system for German is close to becoming reality. It has already been ratified by the governments of Austria and Switzerland, though ratification has been postponed in Germany in order to answer some lastminute questions. The official endorsement of the reform will legalize the changes worked out by various international commissions and sanctioned by the representatives of the three countries involved in the so-called Wiener Gespriche, which took place on three occasions between 1986 and 1994. After the final ratification of the new set of rules, the three countries will be committed to introducing the new system over the next five years. The proposed deadline for the transition period is the year 2001, at which point the new rules will be binding for all official transactions and for the schools. Private citizens can follow their own inclinations but will be encouraged to adopt the new system.1 This spelling reform will be the first in nearly 100 years. However, the system of rules regulating German orthography has not remained static during the past century. It has been controlled and elaborated on by the publications of a private publishing house, namely the Duden Verlag. Eventually, the Duden became the arbiter of the German spelling system.2 The main goal of the first reform (1901) was the creation of a uniform orthographic system for all of German-speaking Europe. No efforts were made at that time to improve the system by simplifying or regularizing it. Since that time, several recommendations for modernizingthe spelling system such as the extensive Stuttgarter and Wiesbadener Empfehlungen of the fifties were published but had little effect. it was only in the late seventies and early eighties that the reform movement became more active, centering around the work of the Institut ffr deutsche Sprache (IDS) in Mannheim. Finally, in 1986, the Kultusministerkonferenz instructed the IDS to come up with detailed recommendations for reform. The overall goal was to make the system of rules more user-friendly, while keeping in mind the present system and suggesting only changes that could be justified both on pragmatic and on linguistic grounds. The general motto was: Don't touch basic rules, but adjust irregularities by getting rid of special rules for small groups of words. This specifically entailed looking at the rule system in those areas which had become increasingly complicated over the years and which presented the greatest difficulties to users of the system. In 1977, the IDES formed a commission, the Internationaler Arbeitskreis for Orthographie, which included members from all four German-speaking countries, namely Austria, Switzerland, the Federal Republic of Germany and, at that time, the German Democratic Republic. In 1992, the commission published its complete proposal.3 Beginning in 1986 and in the following years, representatives of the governments in question met in the so-called Wiener Gesprcche zurNeuregelung der deutschen Rechtschreibung. At each meeting, some of the proposals were provisionally accepted until a complete reform package was finalized in November 1994 and is now awaiting the official signatures.