Almost everyone is this day and age knows what the dictionary is and why we use it. It’s used to check spelling, find definitions, find the synonym or antonym of a word, or how to pronounce a word. But most people know very little about its origins, and why it came to be. The American dictionary was written by a man named Noah Webster. Noah Webster was born in West Hartford, Connecticut in 1758. He came of age during the American Revolution and was a strong advocate of the Constitutional Convention. He believed passionately in the developing cultural independence of the United States, a paramount part of which was to be, a unique American language. Webster, whom has been named “the Father of American Christian education”, wrote the …show more content…
This is the reason; the Webster 1828 dictionary is one of the most important reprints of the twentieth century, the vital tool of education for Christians. In 1806 Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first true American dictionary... Immediately after he went to work on, An American Dictionary of the English Language, for which he learned a total of 26 languages, in order to research the origins of his country's tongue. The book, published in 1828, embodied a new standard of lexicography; it was a dictionary with 70,000 entries that was felt by many to have surpassed Samuel Johnson's 1755 British masterpiece not only in scope but in authority as well. Webster's importance was his willingness to innovate when he thought innovation meant improvement. He was the first to document distinctively American vocabulary such as skunk, hickory, and chowder. Reasoning that many spelling conventions were artificial and needlessly confusing, he urged altering many words: musick to music, centre to center, and plough to plow, for example. Other attempts at reform met with fewer acceptances, however, such as his support for modifying tongue to tung and women to wimmen—the latter of which he argued was "the old and true spelling" and the one that most accurately indicated its …show more content…
There were 2,500 copies printed, at $20 for the two volumes. At first, the book sold poorly, but after lowering the dictionary price to $15 the book sales improved and in 1836 it was announced that the edition was exhausted All copies were not bound up at the same time; the book also appeared in publisher's boards; other original bindings of a later date are not unknown. This standard reference tool will greatly assist students of all ages in their
Simpson, J. A., and E. S. C. Weiner. The Oxford English dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1989.Print.
Noah Webster made many contributions to public education. One of these was suggesting that all British school books be removed from America after the Revolutionary War. Along with this, he created the “Blue-Black Speller,” which was used to teach many children a new version of English. This new English excluded many terms that the British used and so, it was the basis on which American English was born.
2 Delbridge, A., Bernard, J. R. L., Blair, D., Peters, P., Butler, S., Eds., The Macquarie Dictionary, Second Ed., Macquarie: Macquarie, 1995, p. 826.
Started by the Congregationalist, this too was founded as a school to train men for the ministry (Barton, (2004)). This school produced men that signed the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution of the United States of America (Barton, (2004)). This school knew and practiced the belief that God’s Word was of utmost importance in education.
Berube, Margery S., et all; The American Heritage Dictionary Second Edition; Houghton Mifflin Company; Boston, Mass, 1985
Pearsall, J. (ed) 1999, The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 1209.
Noah Webster, familiar to most Americans as the writer of the first American dictionary, worked as a schoolteacher in the late eighteenth century. As he taught, he came to realize that there were some major problems with the way English was taught in the American schools. The United States of America had recently declared its independence from England, and was struggling to form its own identity. The schools were still using textbooks from England, and these books varied in consistency when it came to spelling, pronunciation and grammar (Short Summary Website). As a teacher, and as a patriot, Webster felt a need for an American textbook. He wanted consistency and he wanted it to reflect that there was an American dialect of English that was distinctive from that of England (Bett Website). He had also noted that the social classes of England were often distinguished by differences in dialect, and he wished the United States to have a single, distinctive dialect that would rise above differences in class (Bett Website).
In Johnson’s preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, Johnson argues the importance of preserving language. Other dialects had a produced their own dictionaries, such as the French and Italians. Various writers of the eighteenth century were alarmed at the fact that there was no standard for the English language, since there was no standard it could easily become extinct. Johnson explored many points, such as how and why languages change as well as how many words are formed.
Webster's speller became a secular successor to “The New England Primer” which was very biblically orientated, although it should be noted that Webster did quote much Scripture in his definitions and certainly believed that education was "useless without the Bible" (Wikipedia). Webster believed that "The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws" (Webster’s online dictionary, quotes). Jean Jacques Rousseau's ideas on pedagogy influenced Webster in adjusting his Speller to the stages of a child's development (Wikipedia). Webster held that these distinctive stages of learning moved from the simple to the more complex and he organized his speller accordingly, beginning with letters, sounds, syllables, simple words, more complex words and finally sentences (Wikipedia). In addition to the speller, he also wrote a grammar book (1784) of which he said “grammar is formed on language and not language on grammar” and a reading book (1785) which sought to promote democratic ideals and good moral conduct (Britannica).
Pearsall J (1999) The Concise Oxford Dictionary Tenth Edition page 286 by Oxford University Press in Oxford New York, America
The word definitions in which Cawdrey used were uncomplicated and simple. What set apart Cawdrey was that, unlike future dictionary creators, he did not refer to the great writers of the day or origins of words. Alternatively, the simplicity provided assistance for those who either wanted to have a better understanding of religious sermons and books, or learn how to spell correctly.
Through American history, the people of America originated from Britain meaning their language also originated from Britain. From personal knowledge, the first modifications that were known to the English language started with Noah Merriam in the colonial era. He wrote the Webster dictionary and purposely altered some of the words in his dictionary to create a unique language for the “New Land”. He succeeds in changing several words, including the word “colour” to “color”. However, since America has come to life, many things have created a way to slowly kill and change the English language verbally and in written form.
Millward, C.M. A Biography of the English Language, Harcourt Brace; Boston. 1996. Take Our Word For It, weekly online publication, available at http://www.takeourword.com
The Readers Digest Encyclopedia Dictionary. Ed. Sidney L. Landau. Pleasantville: The Readers Digest Association, 1966. 652,1336.