Noah Webster and the Bee

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 4, 2010 | JOHN A. MURRAY

[reaganaut1]

...

The first national spelling bee was held in 1925, and this year's competition will feature 273 spellers from the U.S. and around the world. Interestingly, English is not even the first language of 21 of those spellers, and Scripps reports that 102 of the contestants speak other languages, from Hebrew to Hindi.

Given this amazing diversity united under one language, the author of America's first dictionary and the originator of uniform spelling in America (which makes the Bee possible!) would be proud. That's Noah Webster, to whom the Bee owes its official dictionary, "Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary."

Webster was a champion of American independence who wanted to do away with the elitism of England's dictionaries, which ignored the speech of common folk. He had a loftier goal as well: "A national language is a band of national union," he wrote, "…for if we do not respect ourselves…other nations will not respect us."

Webster's blueprint for American education received great support from leaders such as George Washington, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin. In the 1780s, Webster, who had graduated from Yale, wrote a spelling book and a grammar book—both of which became standard classroom texts for over 160 years. (When Webster died in 1843, George and Charles Merriam bought the copyright to Webster's dictionary and became the publishers.)

As one of America's Founding Fathers, Webster accomplished many firsts in U.S. history. Not only was he the new country's first best-selling author, for the "Blue-backed Speller." As Pegi Deitz Shea notes in her 2009 book, "Noah Webster: Weaver of Words," he also "penned pamphlets against slavery…wrote about politics, agriculture, and disease…created the laws for the country's free public education system…and helped form and pass the U.S. Constitution."

[reaganaut1]

Doing a search of "speller" books by Webster on Amazon, I see, for example,

The Original Blue Back Speller (Vocabulary of a Warrior) by Noah Webster (Hardcover - Oct. 2003)

The American Speller: An Adaptation of Noah Webster's Blue-Backed Speller by Noah Webster and Barbara Cooney (Hardcover - 1960)

and of course there are many "Webster" dictionaries. I wonder if any homeschoolers here use "Webster" books for spelling.

[whattajoke]

FWIW, Noah Webster’s house is a pretty decent museum here in CT. They even host beer events with Sam Adams beer and celebrate the two patriots.

And the huge costly new “mixed use” shopping/restaurant behemoth is called Blue Back Square, in deference to Webster’s Blue Back Speller. (I hate it.)

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way
of spelling words.
We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes
alike.
Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing.
I have a correspondent whose letters are always a
refreshment to me, there is such a breezy unfettered
originality about his orthography.
He always spells Kow with a large K. Now that is just
as good as to spell it with a small one.
It is better.
It gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope.
It suggests to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new
kind of a cow.

MARK TWAIN

- speech at a spelling match, Hartford, Connecticut,
May 12, 1875. Reported in the Hartford Courant,
May 13, 1875