Noah Webster's Proposed Changes to the English Language (1789) - Agree? | INFJ Forum

Noah Webster's Proposed Changes to the English Language (1789) - Agree?

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Jun 8, 2012
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Noah Webster is the man we now know as the founder of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries. He was an adamant proponent of radical changes to the English language. He felt is necessary to distinguish American-English as very different to British English.

Here is a quote of his from his publication "An Essay on the Necessity, Advantages, and Practicality of Reforming the Mode of Spelling and of Rendering the Orthography of Words Correspondent to Pronunciation", Boston, 1789 (He wasn't much for brevity, apparently)

The principal alterations, necessary to render our orthography sufficiently regular and easy, are these:

"1. The omission of all superfluous or silent letters; as a in bread. Thus bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend. Would this alteration produce any inconvenience, any embarrassment or expense? By no means. On the other hand, it would lessen the trouble of writing, and much more, of learning the language; it would reduce the true pronunciation to a certainty; and while it would assist foreigners and our own children in acquiring the language, it would render the pronunciation uniform, in different parts of the country, and almost prevent the possibility of changes.

2. A substitution of a character that has a certain definite sound, for one that is more vague and indeterminate. Thus by putting ee instead of ea or ie, the words mean, near, speak grieve, zeal, would become meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel. This alteration could not occasion a moments trouble; at the same time it would prevent a doubt respecting the pronunciation; whereas the ea and ie
having different sounds, may give a learner much difficulty. Thus greef should be substituted for grief; kee for key; beleev for believe; laf for laugh; dawter for daughter; plow for plough; tuf for tough; proov for prove; blud for blood; and draft for draught. In this manner ch in Greek derivatives, should be changed into k; for the English ch has a soft sound, as in cherish; but k always a hard sound. Therefore character, chorus, cholic, architecture, should be written karacter, korus, kolic, arkitecture; and were they thus written, no person could mistake their true pronunciation.

3. Thus ch in French derivatives should be changed into sh; machine, chaise, chevalier, should be written masheen, shaze, shevaleer; and pique, tour, oblique, should be written peek, toor, obleek.

4. A trifling alteration in a character, or the addition of a point would distinguish different sounds, without the substitution of a new character. Thus a very small stroke across th would distinguish its two sounds. A point over a vowel, in this manner, a, or û, or i might answer all the purposes of different letters. And for the dipthong ow, let the two letters be united by a small stroke, or both engraven on the same piece of metal, with the left hand line of the w united to the o."

Do you agree with his stance? Why do you think it never happened?
 
I think it doesn't matter because with most people once they learn a word they remember it as a whole unit and give little consideration to the components of it, like remembering a glyph.

The whole "make it look like it sounds" logic is totally unnecessary. Just look at Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
 
That is how the yoof wryt alreddy, blud.
 
I think it'd make english way more germanic looking, kind of going back to its roots.
 
That was fascinating to read. He was a strange sort of prescriptive grammarian. I think that his proposals have the merits that he says that they do, at least to a meaningful extent. It's just not as simple as he suggests. Language is not a system, any more than a coral reef is a system. What he wants to do is lay a concrete grid down on the reef in an attempt to turn it into a system, killing half the coral in the process. Because words aren't just their pronunciation, they're their histories, and irregular or antiquated spellings are part of that. And who does he think is going to organise and authorise the induction of new words in a way that will be recognised, and how does he expect that usage would bear such incessant correction? The reef will just grow up over the concrete grid anyway.

I think that the simplest or most learnable language is not necessarily the best or the most useful language. I think that the confusions of English may be cumbersome, but they are also its greatest strength, because they cause the distortions and admit the additions that proliferate meaning, and the interrogations that examine it and communicate it.

The thing that interested me the most is that although he seems obsessed with English, he seems not to love it. At first I thought he must be a taxonomist rather than a linguist but of course that isn't a very fair distinction, and there seems to be more to it than that. But I still can't help disliking the guy. It's bad of me, I know.

This has really got me thinking about the extent to which those weird spellings could represent a legitimate aspect of pronunciation. It is definitely interesting to think about.
 
The word "ecosystem" seems ridiculous now that I think about it. There are elements that give and take in a way that resolves in some sort of balance of change, but it's chaotic, not systematic.
 
I think this has to be read in the perspective of what was going on in North America around the 18th century.

There were a lot of European languages spoken on the east coast before the revolutionary war. People like Benjamin Franklin and Noah Webster were paranoid that English would be pushed out of America if the English speakers stopped having babies, so Webster wanted to make English easier for everyone to speak. He felt it necessary to Anglicize the Germans and Dutch parts of North America, like Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Franklin was especially worried about the survival of the white race, and feared that if English was too hard for black people to understand, he would be forced to start living like "them". What a guy!
 
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Andrew Carnegie also tried to institute changes to the English language around the turn of last century. I don't know what they were and how they were similar to or differed from Webster's, but yeah. Mark Twain also got wrapped up in it as well, although I believe he brought up more of the logistical problems of it than anything else. Of course, it's hilarious to read. I don't have any links offhand, but I'm sure all he had to say is out there on the interwebnets somewhere.

Invisible is right, there is a rich history in the English language. The BBC did a seven or eight hour long documentary on the history of the English language, for those inclined to dig deeper on the subject. It was narrated by Melvyn Bragg. Here is the first part. The other parts should be on Youtube somewhere:

[video=youtube_share;VsVz5U76kX0]http://youtu.be/VsVz5U76kX0[/video]