A History of English Language

The english language in america
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country must in some future time, be as distinguished by the superiority of her literary
improvements, as she is already by the liberality of her civil and ecclesiastical
constitutions. Europe is grown old in folly, corruption and tyranny…. For America in her
infancy to adopt the present maxims of the old world, would be to stamp the wrinkles of
decrepid age upon the bloom of youth and to plant the seeds of decay in a vigorous
constitution.” Six years later, in his Dissertations on the English Language, he went
much further. “As an independent nation,” he says, “our honor requires us to have a
system of our own, in language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we
are, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and
her language on the decline. But if it were not so, she is at too great a distance to be our
model, and to instruct us in the principles of our own tongue.” But independence of
England was not the only factor that colored people’s thinking in the new nation. A
capital problem in 1789 was that of welding the thirteen colonies into a unified nation,
and this is also reflected in Webster’s ideas. In urging certain reforms of spelling in the
United States he argues that one of the advantages would be that it would make a
difference between the English orthography and the American, and “that such an event is
an object of vast political consequence.” A “national language,” he says, “is a band of
national union. Every engine should be employed to render the people of this country
national; to call their attachments home to their own country; and to inspire them with
the pride of national character.” Culturally they are still too dependent upon England.
“However they may boast of Independence, and the freedom of their government, yet
their opinions are not sufficiently independent; an astonishing respect for the arts and
literature of their parent country, and a blind imitation of its manners, are still prevalent
among the Americans.” It is an idea that he often returns to. In his Letter to Pickering
(1817) he says, “There is nothing which, in my opinion, so debases the genius and
character of my countrymen, as the implicit confidence they place in English authors, and
their unhesitating submission to their opinions, their derision, and their frowns. But I trust
the time will come, when the English will be convinced that the intellectual faculties of
their descendants have not degenerated in America; and that we can contend with them in
letters, with as much success, as upon the ocean.” This was written after the War of 1812.
So far as the language is concerned, he has no doubt of its ultimate differentiation. He is
sure that “numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new
combinations of ideas in arts and science, and some intercourse with tribes wholly
unknown in Europe, will introduce new words into the American tongue. These causes
will produce, in a course of time, a language in North America, as different from the
future language of England, as the Modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the
German, or from one another.”
The culmination of his efforts to promote the idea of an American language was the
publication of his American Dictionary in 1828. Residence for a year in England had
somewhat tempered his opinion, but it was still fundamentally the same. In the preface to
that work he gave final expression to his conviction: “It is not only important, but, in a
degree necessary, that the people of this country, should have an American Dictionary of
the English Language; for, although the body of the language is the same as in England,
and it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness, yet some differences must exist. Language
is the expression of ideas; and if the people of our country cannot preserve an identity of
ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language. Now an identity of ideas depends