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by S.Pathiravitana

Noah Webster's Dictionary is hardly used in Sri Lanka. As writing and spelling in this country is done as the English do, we hardly need to turn to him for guidance. But, in America, the land of his birth, he is a legend and his dictionary is said to be a kind of Bible American users swear by.

He is the man who showed the Americans how to spell the English language with ease. When you read and come across words like humor, flavour and savor and begin to wonder where the 'u's went you must know that is the work of Noah Webster.

Not only British

He simplified the spelling not only on the principles of logic but just to remove the frostiness from the British style. The men who drifted to America on the Mayflower boat disenchanted by the politics of Britain came looking for a home where they could all make a fresh start again.

In that crowd the man who thought that they must go a step further and must also be culturally independent from Britain was Noah Webster. And the best way he thought to do that was to go for the language, which that mix among Americans tried to speak and were doing it rather awkwardly.

This was because they were from different regions in Britain and from different countries. And English, as foreigners know quite well, is a bit of a puzzle at first.

He first produced a simplified spelling book, which became a huge success and made him even financially stable for a while and helped him move a few years later to produce the first of his dictionaries in 1806, exactly 200 years ago.

The New York Times commemorating the event said that Webster's other political purpose in writing his dictionary was to promote national unity. Like Sri Lanka, America at the beginning of their independence was a divided land. "He was disturbed to find in his travels that Southern whites, blacks, old time Yankees and newly arrived immigrants were in many cases unable to talk to each other. He believed a 'Federal language' could be a band of national union."

Linguistically, the New York Times says, "The United States has more than achieved the cultural independence Webster dreamed of.

He would be amazed to see that it now not only controls its own culture, but also exports to the world - including Britain." Yes, there are many things in modern English usage that are imports from America that would raise the ire of many English writers like Coleridge and Swift, who fretted and fumed each time they stumbled over an American import.

Here is a sample; "I regret to see that vile and barbarous vocable talented, stealing out of the newspapers into the leading reviews and most respectable publications of the day. Why not shillinged, farthinged, tenpenced &c? The formation of a participle passive from a noun is a licence that nothing but a very peculiar felicity can excuse. If mere convenience is to justify such attempts on the idiom, you cannot stop till the language becomes in the proper sense of the word, corrupt....

Most of these pieces of slang come from America." - Table Talk by Coleridge. As you can see from the depth and width of the use of the word talented has spread today, it has been difficult to oppose the changes that come over language from time to time. News magazines like the Time were able to draw attention to what they were saying by the spanking novelty of the words and phrases they invented.

Those who look upon such changes as a 'corruption' of language may be consoled by the admission of another dictionary maker, Dr Samuel Johnson, who said about changes that occur in language "no dictionary of a living tongue can ever be perfect, since while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some are fading away."

Dr. Johnson became famous overnight after he compiled a dictionary for the English language. He did it single handed with the assistance of a few clerical hands. The book was a project launched by booksellers at that time and it included 40,000 entries.

There were no patrons coming forward to help Johnson in his work. Once he succeeded on his own, Lord Chesterfield the man to whom he appealed for assistance but who ignored his appeal, reviewing the dictionary recommended it to the public.

One last plea

This prompted Johnson to send him a letter full of ironical praise for this gesture and declining it with ironic grace.

Here's an extract: "Seven years, My lord have now past since I waited in your outward Rooms or was repulsed from your Door, during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of Publication without one Act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron before.

"My Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a Man struggling for Life in the water and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help.

The notice which you have been pleased to take of my Labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it, till I am solitary and cannot impart it, till I am known, and do not want it."

Noah Webster did not have to suffer 'the proud man's contumely' like that, but he also had his ups and downs in publishing dictionaries and being in debt. It was a bookseller and a printer that finally took over his troubles, and his dictionaries are now known as the Merriam Websters.

Noah Webster was a highly qualified man for the job of dictionary maker. He worked through it for nearly twenty years putting forward 70,000 entries almost twice that of Dr Johnson and in the course of it studied twenty-six languages including Sanskrit and Anglo Saxon.

Webster's pioneering efforts resulted in taking a lot away from the language of Britain by way of grammar, idiom and in the meaning of words. You may have to tread cautiously when you use some of them now.

Webster's crafting of the English language has left out some forms like dreamt, learnt, spelt, which he may have thought are now quaint sounding and the American English now seem to prefer saying dreamed, learned and spelled. They also prefer to say Monday through Friday instead of Monday to Friday.

I'll go take a bath is the American way of saying I'll go and take a bath. And one must be particularly careful in using words like shagging, fag and fanny; they refer to quite different things in American English.

There are also among Americans some critics who think of Noah Webster as "a severe, correct, humorless, religious, temperate man who was not easy to like, even by other severe, religious, temperate, humorless people" and contrasting him with Samuel Johnson who was a witty, jolly man whose discussions with his friends were like drinking parties.

And besides, they also say, that, Johnson had wit and old-world charm in the definitions he gave. Look at his definition of the elephant: "The largest of all quadrupeds, of whose sagacity, faithfulness, prudence, and even understanding, many surprising revelations are given... by one blow with his trunk he will kill a camel or a horse, and will raise of prodigious weight with it.") About English haughtiness (oats: "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.").

One reason for Webster's unpopularity with this crowd may be the Bible he re-wrote and published removing some of the explicit descriptions in the original and modifying what Onan did in a presentable way and the behaviour of similar characters.

Perhaps he inclined to be a Fundamentalist thinker at an unfavourable time. It must be said that Webster's new spelling was not allowed to reach its logical end.

He had got to the stage when he wanted to spell tongue as 'tung' and women as 'wimmin' - the way they are naturally pronounced. But something prevailed and Noah Webster was stalled.

Once the Merriams took over the business they have seen to it that many improvements were made.

They now say about the Webster's put out by the Merriam firm, Webster without the Websterisms. As a point of local interest I may add that for the 1945 edition of the Merriam Webster Dictionary one of its general editors was Ananda Coomaraswamy.

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