On 09/11/2015 12:03 PM, Rich Alderson wrote:
However, it was far earlier than the Victorians.
Noah Webster
(1758-1843) only overlaps the Victorian era by 6 years; he was
reacting against the aristocratic spelling norms of the 17th and 18th
centuries, when Latin and Greek were held to be more important than
English in the learning of the latter language. His spelling book
was originally published in 1783.
It should be noted that neither Webster, nor Col. McCormick (he of the
Chicago Tribune simplified spelling) got all of what they wanted.
Webster wanted spellings of "ake", "soop", "cloke",
"wimmen"...
The NEA in the 1890s accounted for "catalog", "prolog",
"program"...
Then there was the Simplified Spelling Board of 1906, advocated by Andrew
Carnegie and Theodore Roosevelt. Congress didn't much care for the 300-word
list, but some spellings made it into modern usage. "Meter",
"maneuver",
"orthopedic", "omelet", "sulfate", "wagon" are
among those.
Thus, US spelling has been a work in progress.
This discussion reminds me of this quote:
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words;
on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary."
:)
g.
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