Webster's Dictionary: Who is Webster?

Everyone of us has used the dictionary or thesaurus at least for one time. The Webster's Dictionary is one of the oldest and famous available dictionaries. Have you ever wondered what Webster is? Or to be more accurate, who Webster is?

Webster comes from Noah Webster who came up with this book in 1828. Born in October 16, 1758, Webster came from an ordinary colonial family. They lived at the time when most people made a living by farming. His family led a simple life and lived on his father's farming and weaving.

At the time that he was 16 years old and ready for college, few people actually went to colleges. Noah's parents must have seen something special in him, and they knew that he really loved to learn. His parents sent him to go to Yale, which was Connecticut's only college at that time. He finished in 1778 and immediately taught in Glastonbury, Hartford and West Hartford. He originally wanted to study law, but they could not afford it at. When he was financially able, he sent himself to law school.

Webster was said to have disliked American schools. He complained that the rooms were cramped, they had untrained teachers, and that the books came from England. For him, it seemed strange that Americans were not using American books. This led him to write his own textbook, "A Grammatical Institute of the English Language". This actually consisted of 3 parts: a speller, a grammar, and a reader.

Webster must have really loved the languages, because he tried to learn 26 different languages including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit. This became a tool for his research for his own country's language.

In 1801, he started to write the first American dictionary. He did not want the use a language that was used by the English. His main purpose was to create a single language spoken by all Americans. He said it was not right that people from different parts of the country spelled, pronounced and used words differently.

Webster was the first to document distinctively American vocabulary such as "skunk", "hickory" and "chowder". He urged to change many words by using the American spelling, instead of the English spelling. Examples include changing "musick" to "music", "centre" to "center", "plough" to "plow".

Interestingly, he attempted to change other words with the argument that he was using the old and true spelling of words, and tried to spell them to indicate their correct pronunciation. These included modifying the word "tongue" to "tung" and "women" to "wimmen". This attempt was met with less acceptance, obviously.

In 1828, after 27 years, Webster was able to complete his dictionary at age 70. He called it "An American Dictionary of the English Language". The dictionary had 70,000 words in it. Surprisingly, the first edition only sold 2,500 copies. Because of this, he was even forced to mortgage his house so he could come out with the second edition of the dictionary. From then on, he was plagued with debt for the rest of his life.

It took Noah Webster, who later became known as the "Father of American Scholarship and Education" decades to complete his work. It was not considered an important work even after completing the second edition. Unfortunately, until the time that he died in 1843, his work was still unrecognized.

Webster would be pleased to know that today, students and other people have made his dictionary a very important tool in studying. It is always consulted to check the spelling of a word, its syllables and how it is pronounced. So every time you would use the dictionary, give a little recognition to the man who came up with one of the most useful books of all time.