Why doesn’t the English-speaking world celebrate Dictionary Day?

[Joe Carillo]

Why don’t people in the English-speaking world celebrate Dictionary Day?

Erin McKean wistfully asks this question in “The Case for Dictionary Day,” an article he wrote for the October 18, 2009 issue of the Boston Globe. “It’s not like Dictionary Day is too obviously geeky to inspire celebration,” he argues, “(for) in the past month we’ve seen outpourings of support for both National Punctuation Day (Sept. 24) and Talk Like A Pirate Day (Sept. 19). Even National Grammar Day (March 4) gets its share of the spotlight.”

So he reasons that it’s only proper and fitting that we should celebrate Dictionary Day every October 16, for that day is the birthday of Noah Webster (October 16, 1758 – May 28, 1843), the American lexicographer, textbook author, editor, and spelling reformer who came out with the first modern English dictionary in the New World, An American Dictionary of the English Language.

Read Erin McKean’s “The Case for Dictionary Day” in the Boston Globe now!

[maxsims]

What's to celebrate?

[Joe Carillo]

The logic of Erin McKean in calling for a Dictionary Day celebration is, I think, captured best by this part of her article:

"If you think of Dictionary Day as being about a dusty book that’s hardly ever opened, then sure, it’s going to rank slightly further down the celebratory scale than National Corn Dog Day (which was March 21 this year, if you’re curious). But if you think about dictionaries as being about the language, then isn’t the English language well worth a holiday?

"Maybe we should take our cue from another recent holiday - South Korea’s Hangul Day, celebrated on Oct. 9. Hangul Day commemorates the invention of the Korean alphabet by King Sejong the Great in 1446. The new alphabet was considered to be so dangerous - by making literacy possible for more than just a tiny elite - that it was nearly suppressed after the king’s death. Today, it’s a cultural treasure and considered by linguists to be one of the world’s perfect alphabets.

"So we should expand our thinking about dictionaries. Language is power - we understand that words can move us to tears or laughter, inspire us to great deeds or urge us to mob action. Dictionaries are the democratization of that power, and the more words they contain, the more democratic they are. The dictionary is a gigantic armory and toolbox combined, accessible to all. It reflects our preoccupations, collects our cultural knowledge, and gives us adorable pictures of aardvarks, to boot. And it does all this one word at a time."

Sounds reasonable enough to me--and from a vocabulary and semantic standpoint, a much better idea than marking a special day for the guy who misnamed the natives of the New World as "Indians" and got everybody to stick with the wrong nomenclature for posterity! (Of course, her reference to the "adorable pictures of aardvarks" puts her noble proposal on a self-destruct mode!)

[maxsims]

Sure, but Webster?  Methinks the good Doctor Johnson's birthday is more appropriate!     

[Joe Carillo]

Sure, but Webster?  Methinks the good Doctor Johnson's birthday is more appropriate!     

I absolutely agree with you on that, Max! I think Samuel Johnson deserves a special day for himself for coming up with his Dictionary of the English Language in England 73 years ahead of Noah Webster in America. But as you know, a lot of commercial considerations and marketing thinking are involved in declaring special days in honor of highly accomplished people. In the business of dictionaries, in particular, there’s no doubt that the Webster’s name has become much more popular and resonant than Johnson’s. Indeed, hardly anybody in the school-and-office-book market these days thinks of Johnson when it comes to dictionaries. On the other hand, many dictionary publishers—with the notable exception of Oxford English Dictionary’s—seem to want to have a piece of the Webster’s pie by affixing the Webster’s name to their dictionary brand. Random House, which for many years used its house brand for its dictionaries (I still have my copy in a storage box somewhere), now calls its dictionary Random House Webster’s. Even Microsoft’s Encarta Dictionary—after so many years of trying to hack it out in the market using its own house name—had finally decided to also appropriate the Webster’s name to its dictionaries; it’s now called Encarta Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language. Microsoft, with all the might of its fabled brand name, bowing out in favor of Webster’s? Talk of the immense power of the Webster’s brand recall!

[maxsims]

Very true!

Did you ever see the film, "The Road to Morocco", one of the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "Road" series?  In the last line of the title song, "We're Off On The Road to Morocco", there is a particularly clever wordplay that illustrates your point:

"Like Webster's dictionary,we're Morocco bound."

 

[Joe Carillo]

I love the pun, Max, but I'm afraid I wasn't born yet when The Road to Morocco came out in the theaters. Whether in black-and-white or in color, though, I'd love to see it on DVD if it's available in the video stores.

Talking about movies about the English language, I got myself a DVD copy of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady a few months back (but of course I must have watched that movie four times in my long-ago youth). I just can't get enough of Prof. Henry Higgins' delightful rant against the English not being able to teach themselves how to speak English properly. But compared to what Prof. Higgins had to say about the English in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, the play that was the basis for both the stage musical and the movie, that rant is decidedly tame. (I suggest that learners of the language check out for themselves both the movie and the play.)

[maxsims]

I particularly liked the professor's film line (referring to English):  "In America, they haven't spoken it for years!"

[Joe Carillo]

As the Brits and the Aussies would say, that's spot-on! Most of America have actually been using Ameringlish since George Bernard Shaw's time--thanks or no thanks (depending on one's point of view)  to the efforts of Noah Webster, who actually thought that British English needed a lot of modernizing particularly in spelling.

[maxsims]

Yep, he wanted "tongue" spelt "tung"!    I wonder what other of his spellings didn't catch on?

[Joe Carillo]

Yep, he wanted "tongue" spelt "tung"!    I wonder what other of his spellings didn't catch on?

Repelling "tongue" as "tung" was far out indeed, Max, and you've certainly gotten me interested into looking into Noah Webster's other respelling attempts that had not caught on. But we've got to give it to the guy when it comes to his many innovations that did make a lot of sense. I discussed some of them in an essay I wrote for my column in The Manila Times way back in January 2003. Below are some excerpts from that column:

"The great divide between American English and British English was no doubt created by the power of mass migrations, the printed word, and the mass media to transmute language, but I believe that it was pushed irreversibly by the indomitable will of one man. That man was the largely self-taught American lexicographer Noah Webster. Unable to pursue law studies after graduating from Yale College in 1778, he decided to work as a teacher. He was appalled by the dearth of teaching materials in American schools, where as many as 70 pupils of all ages would be jammed into one-room affairs, taught by untrained teachers, using badly written books. He thus wrote A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, a textbook on English reading, spelling, and pronunciation that was to become the most popular book of its time.

"Webster, believing that Americans should all speak in the same way and not just imitate the British, later decided to write the first American dictionary. His most audacious innovation was simplifying British spelling. He saw no logical reason for using the letter “u” in such English words as “colour” and “labour,” nor for the “k” in such words as “musick” and “traffick,” so he knocked it off in all of them. He did away with the “-que” in words like “cheque” and “masque,” replacing it with “–ck,” and transposed the “–re” word endings to “–er” in words like “theatre” and “centre.” He also freely added new American words into his dictionary, like “skunk” and “squash.” When he finished An American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828, after 27 years of work, it contained 70,000 words and their meanings—superior in quality and scope to the other English dictionaries of the time."

Let me just append a note here that in contrast, Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language had come up with only 42,773 words some 73 years earlier. Still and all, we must acknowledge that Webster and Johnson each did such a great job for the English language and definitely deserves a special commemorative day in the English-speaking world.