Noah Webster was an American who believed that Americans should learn from American books and not from British ones. He wrote his own textbook ‘A Grammatical Institute of the English Language’ in 1783.
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| Noah Webster |
This book nicknamed the ‘Blue backed speller’ because of its cover taught five generations of American children to read, write and pronounce English words for over a century.In its time it was the most popular American book and sold almost a million copies.
In 1801, Webster started work on what Americans used. He did this for two reasons. Americans did not speak like the British and help the Americans of different states to speak alike. In his dictionary Webster included words such as color instead of colour and music instead of musick. He also included words such as skunk and squash and other words not in English dictionaries. ‘A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1806 and had definitions for about 37,000 words.
It took Webster 22 more years to publish his American Dictionary of the English Language. Published in 1828 it defined over 65,000 words. Noah Webster was 70 years old when his dictionary was published.