Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1875 — How Webster Reformed Orthography. [ARTICLE]

How Webster Reformed Orthography.

A writer in the Atlantic Monthly gives an interesting account of Noah Webster's efforts to reform the spelling of the English language. It seems that 'Webster’s patriotism first impelled him to the work, and at one time he wrote: “In this country it is desirable that inquiries should be free and opinions unshackled. North America is destined to be the seat of a people more numerous, probably, than any nation now existing with the same vernacular language, unless one except some Asiatic nations. It would be little honorable to the founders of a great empire to be hurried prematurely into errors and ebrruptions by the mere force of authority." Tins appeal to the pride of the young nation, says the Attontic writer, is a’ curious part of that consciousness of being an American which we are inclined to think was more pronounced in Webster than in any of the leaders of the country. The reader and grammar recede into obscurity before the shining Success of Part I. of A Grammatical Institute, which at first “containing a new and accurate standard of pronunciation,” afterward took the title of the American SpellingBook, and finally, undergoing considerable revision, passed into the well-known Elementary. “The spelling-book,” he says in one of his essays, “ docs more to form the language of a nation than all other books,” and the man who first supplied bur young nation with a spellingbook has undoubtedly affected its spelling habits more than any other single person. It is very plain, too, that Webster was a moralist, and philosopher as well as a speller, lie was by no means restricted in his ambition to the teaching of correct'fepelling, but Ihc aimed to have a hand in the molding of the national mind and national manners. In his pieface to the American Spelling-Book, he says: “ To diffuse an uniformity and purity of language in America, to destroy the provincial prejudices that originate in the trifling differences of dialect and produce reciprocal ridicule, to promote the interest of literature and the harmony of the United States, is the most earnest wish of the author, and it, is* his highest ambition to deserve the approbation and encouragement of his countrymen.” His spellingbook, accordingly, in its early editions, contained a npmlier of sharp little warnings in the form of foot-notes, which imply that he seized the young nation just in time to prevent the perpetuation of vulgar errors which, once becoming universal, would have required the hereditary ■Webster to make them the basis of orthoepic canons. Thus ax is reprobated when aafc is intended; Americans were to say wainscot, not winchcott; resin, not rozum; chimney, not ch imbly; confiscate, not confisticatc. As these warnings disappeared after a few years, it may lx? presumed that he regarded the immediate danger as past; but the more substantial matters of g<x>d morals came to have greater prominence, and in addition to the columns oi classified words, which constitute almost the sole contents of the,.earliest edition, there came to be inserted those fables and moral and industrial injunctions, with sly reminders of die virtue of Washington, which have sunk into Hie soft minds of three generations of Americans. Webster had the prudence, possibly fortified by his publisher'sworldly wisdom, to keep his spelling-book five from the orthographic reforms which he was longing to make, and, remembering the sturdiness with which he held to what he regarded as sound grammatical principles, we suspect that his spelling-book cost him many conflicts of conscience. He very early threw out feelers in the direction which he afterward took. In the preface quoted from above he says further: “The spelling of such words as publick, favour, neighbour, head, prove, phlegm, his, give, debt, rough well, instead of the more natural and easy method, public, favor, nabor, bed, proov, flem, hiz, giv, det, ruf, wel, has the plea of antiquity ii^its favor; mid yet 1 am convinced that commonsense and convenience will sooner or later jret the better of the present absurd practice.' 1 There is a curious foot-note to the introduction to his dictionary (edition of 1828), in which he supports the spelling of favor by the authority of Gen. Washington, who was the most unimpeachable authority. since he was the Father of his Country. His mind wa intent on this reform, and so early as 1790 he published A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings, in which he carried out. in part, his notions as to the reform of the American language. The preface is printed as he decided me whole volume ought to have been, except for the inconvenience of it. “The reader will observ,” he says, “that the orthography of thevolum iz not uniform. The reazon iz tliat many of the essays have been published before, in the common orthography. and it would hav been a la borious task to copy the whole for the sake of changing the spelling. In the essays ritten within the last yeer a considerable change l of spelling iz ’introduced by way of experiment. This liberty waz taken by the writers before the age of Queen Elizabeth, and to this we are indeted for the preference of modern spelling over that of Gower and Chaucer. The man who admits that the change of howbonde, mynde, ygone, moneth into husband, mind, gone, month iz an improvement must acknowledge also the riting oj hdth, broth. rang, tung, munth to be an improvement. There iz no altemitiv. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds stil "exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our lan will prove that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors.” The reader can easily see that Webster himself in the above paragraph is rather a timid reformer, attacking such defenseless little words as it, and passing by respectfully would and eifered. The general appearance of those essays in the volume, which are printed after Webster’s own heart, leads one happening noon them nowadays into some disappointment, since they are by no means to be ranked with the’ huqio’rous writings of later mispellers, who have contrived to get some fun out of respectable words by pulling off their wigs and false teeth and turning them loose inthe streets. We fancy that Isaiah Thomas, who printed this volume, had no great relish for these pranks, and Webster himself was no ha-rum-scarum reformer who regarded himself as appointed trumpet-blower against any Jericho which lay in his way. He was an experimenter, sanguine and shrewd, who made use of the most direct means for securing his results. “In closing my remarks on false or irregular orthography,” he writes in one of his essays, “I would suggest that American printers, if they would unite in attempting corrections, would accomplish the object in a very short time. To prove how much influence printers have on this subject, I would state that within my memory they have banished the use of the longs in printed books; they have cor rected the spelling of household, falsehood, in which the s and A were formerly united, forming household, falsehood, and this has been done without any rule given

them or any previous concert.” The present printer of Webster’s dictionary remembers that when he 1 was a boy of thirteen, working at the case in Burlington, a little, pale-faced man came into the office and handed him a printedJdip, saying: “My lad, when you use these words, spell them as here: theater, center, etc. It was Noah Webster traveling alxmt among the printing-offices, and persuading people to spell as he did, and a better illustration could not be found of the reformer’s sagacity, and his patient method of effecting his purpose. . '*