Alisha Week #6 - Webster's Words

Portrait of Noah Webster by James Herring, 1833

          It was only this week that I learned that Webster’s dictionary was created specifically to standardize the American version of English (thank you Ms. Veizades). Apparently, Noah Webster dedicated nearly three decades of his life to developing the dictionary before ultimately publishing it in 1828. Over the course of said thirty years, he wrote twelve thousand never-before seen entries for the dictionary, and learned twenty-six languages to properly trace the etymology of the included words. The evolution of something as simple as the words we speak, one of the most basic forms of communication we have, was enough to motivate one man to do all of that work. 

        Back in the day of Noah Webster’s life, this obsession made sense. A young country that has proven itself to be a viable future for its people will of course develop its culture and language separate to the Europeans across an entire ocean, of course lean on documented proof of change as evidence for their superiority, of course use their differences to build a new national identity in an age of widespread economic, religious, and political reforms. We do not necessarily need our language differences to be this important now, though. Modern America has already proven itself on the world stage, already built a unified national identity and society that it has stayed with for generations, but we emphasize it anyway to remind ourselves of said unity.

        This fascination with America’s language goes beyond general applications to the nation. In HBO’s Young Justice, one character’s most famous joke is about orphaned negatives (ironic considering he is an orphan himself); at school I constantly get into arguments about whether “color” or “colour” looks prettier in each of our handwriting. We each chose to hang onto this distinction, an indirectly defining characteristic of what it means to be an American, even as regional dialects form and international languages take root in America.

(Honestly, English isn’t even that unique of a language. About 80% of English words are borrowed from others, mostly French and Latin. We simply exaggerate for this air of importance about our “independence” from Europe.)

        When Webster wrote his dictionary, he included over seventy thousand words. Today, Merriam-Webster classifies about four hundred and seventy thousand words, and some estimates go up to about a million (although most experts agree this is an overestimate). In an age where the unique American language is as crucial as ever, where politicians insult each other as “anti-American” socialists and discriminatory language is rampant in our highest offices, literacy and proficient comprehension of our country’s communications is imperative to our country remaining as full of potential as it once was for Webster.