However, some of his recommendations caught on.He dropped the U in words like color, humor, and honor, and changed the S to Z in words like civilization and the R-E to E-R in words like center and theater. Those these changes might have been phonetically logical, most of them were just too radical. He would have changed tongue to T-U-N-G, and women to W-I-M-M-E-N. A few years later, he published an essay advocating a radical simplification of English spelling.įor example, he wanted to spell ache, as in headache, A-K-E, soup with a double o, and to drop the silent E at the end of words like determine. It was a kind of textbook with exercises and readings called the Blue Back Speller and was used for generations to teach reading and writing. Webster's first book wasn't a dictionary, but a spelling book. He said that a national language is a national tie and since America was made up of people from different cultures and classes, it was important to establish that language right away as being distinct from that of the British colonizers. Webster was a patriot through and through and he passionately believed that the new nation should have its own language. But probably the only successful spelling reformer in the history of the English language was Noah Webster, who made the changes that we recognize today as American-English spelling. Benjamin Franklin even worked out an entire new phonetic system and George Bernard Shaw funded research into creating a whole new alphabet. Many people over the years have tried to simplify English spelling. Karen Schwaller writes from her grain and livestock farm near Milford, Iowa.Welcome to Ask the Editor, I'm Peter Sokolowski, Editor at Large at Merriam-Webster. Standing together, we can create something of greatness … something larger than ourselves. When we see or think about people who differ from us, remember that every person has value. Alphabet soup is made of pasta and pure genius. Parents everywhere marvel at its simple complexity, having the power to transform meal time into fun family time and spelling class all at once. Alphabet soup probably takes the longest of all soups to eat, especially if you’re a kid. After all, who could sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” without the tune of the “ABC Song?” Make yourself known in your world, and be ready to adapt. In fact, they are the most sung-about group on earth, with almost every preschool-aged child knowing their song. The letters of the alphabet are a proud assembly. Letters helped put a name to a face … and eventually, a face to salvation. With heaviness, some letters of the alphabet had to come together to form the name of “Judas.” But if that didn’t happen, human salvation would have been lost. But the alphabet shows us that they - and we - can all live together harmoniously, even though we are very different from each other.
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