The findings of this study also have implications for language planning. Hungarian linguists and language cultivators have, for a long time, complained about the deficient keyboard of typewriters and argued that the lack of keys for long high vowels accelerated the process of vowel shortening and contributed to the "degradation" of the language. This argument assumes a causal relationship between orthography and change in speech.
The VARBRUL analysis in this study presents partial empirical evidence for such a causal relationship. We have shown that typewritten texts can indeed influence vowel length in reading style. Thus the deficient keyboard of Hungarian typewriters could, at least theoretically, trigger vowel shortening. But several other phenomena would need to be investigated before the typewriter could be "blamed" for changing the Hungarian vowel system. For instance, we do not know what segments of the Hungarian population have been exposed to what amounts of typewritten texts vs. printed texts. Even if such data were available, we would need to know whether a particular amount of exposure to short-typed high vowels is enough to affect speakers' (underlying) vowel system. And finally, such important sociolinguistic phenomena as, for instance, prestige and mobility would also have to be accounted for. Until those questions are answered, the Hungarian typewriter is much less the cause of high vowel shortening than it is a scapegoat.