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« on: June 15, 2011, 03:26:15 PM »
My supposed lack of knowledge of Noah Webster is another presumption, is it not?
My opinion, for what it's worth, is that the irascible gentleman's dictionary would have still been the runaway bestseller that it was, regardless of the "reforms" it contained. It was first printed at a time of rampant nationalism, when "Americanism" was held (at least locally) as morally superior to European customs, and when imported dictionaries were prohibitively expensive. In short, Webster produced and marketed a much-needed product at the right time and at the right price.
Webster lived long enough to expand on his "reforms", but such expansion was minimal. Perhaps he (and others) realised that a complete reworking would result in a lexicon so bizarre that all the English that had gone before would become lost to us. Among many, Mark Twain was aware of the dangers of "reform" when he satirically wrote:
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later.
Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and Iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c, y and x — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais ch, sh, and th rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
By the way, I discovered another strait, Tables Strait (off the east coast of Mindoro) which again shows that the early mapping folk knew something about word roots.