The role of language and linguistic-philological studies in the nationalist movements of the nineteenth century received much attention. The aim of this article is to focus on the language factor in Zionism and the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language in the Yishuv between 1904 and 1914. Founded in 1904, the Hebrew Language Council was expected to enhance the process of revival and, from the very beginning, an unmistakably nationalist attitude to its subject matter marked the Council's agenda. However, the authority of the Council to make binding decisions on linguistic matters was contested by a number of other Zionist institutions, a development which ruined the prestige and effectiveness of the Council. The controversy resulted less from a turf war or quarrels over scarce resources than a deeper question of which institution represented the “true” Hebraic spirit. The World Zionist Organization's decision to de-align from cultural matters, including the revival of Hebrew, worsened the conditions under which the Council operated. From a comparative perspective, thus, the Hebrew case provides an unusual case of linguistic nationalism, which should be of interest to students of both nationalism and sociolinguistics.

Romanisation has not been studied from a comparativeperspective so far, although there are a number ofcase studies that focus on particular speechcommunities. In order to fill this gap in theliterature, the articles in this special issue werefirst presented at a workshop, entitled“Romanisation in Comparative Perspective: ExplainingSuccess and Failure”, held at Bilkent University,Ankara, 5–6 September 2007. The workshop addressedthis theme with the specific aim of explaining whyromanisation has been implemented successfully incertain cases and why it has failed in others.Hailing from diverse disciplines, workshopparticipants brought together a variety ofmethodological approaches, which represented achallenge and an opportunity at the same time. Eachparticipant reassessed the story of a success orfailure within the socio-political and historicalcontext of a particular country or region.

Following the establishment of the Republic of Turkeyin 1923 and the consolidation of the Kemalist regimein 1926, the President of the new republic, MustafaKemal Atatürk launched a reform process which aimedat changing Turkey's laws, administration, cultureand, most significantly, its image. One facet ofthis process of transformation was the languagereform that commenced with romanisation of theTurkish script in late 1928 and reached its zenithlater on in the 1930s. Between 1932 and 1934, theTürk Dil Kurumu – the TurkishLanguage Institute, a radical reformist institutionfounded by Atatürk in 1932 – banished thousands ofArabic and Persian words from spoken and writtenTurkish and fabricated new, ‘authentically’ Turkish,words to replace them. The radical-reformist zealsubsided in 1935 as a result of the linguistic chaosof the previous years and came to a halt in 1936with the proclamation of the so-called Sun-LanguageTheory. However, so much had changed during thosefew years and has done since, that even secondaryschool and university graduates in contemporaryTurkey are not able to read and understand, forinstance, Atatürk's famous Speechof 1926 from its original, and hence feel the needto consult ‘modernised’ or simplified versions. Inthis respect, the legacy of the language reform inearly republican Turkey remains a matter of bittercontroversy and pits the reformist Kemalists againstan array of Islamists, conservatives and evenliberals. The current debate on what proper Turkishis neatly overlaps with the major fault line thatstill divides Turkish society.