Can you control your dreams?

Dreams have been of paramount importance to cultures throughout the ages.  Lucid dreaming isn't new either. According to the podcast, Aristotle may have been the first to write about lucid dreaming, although he didn't have a term for it. And some Tibetan Buddhists have been practicing something like lucid dreaming for a very long time. They used to call it dream yoga.

A Dutch psychiatrist named Frederik van Eeden came up with the term for lucid dreams in 1913. He claimed that there are nine types of dreams in all, including ordinary, symbolic and vivid dreams. Lucid dreams often times involve flying.

Lucid dreaming occurs during the REM sleep, the fifth sleep stage. During this stage our body becomes motionless, with the exception of the eyelids. So, through the movement of our eyes, we can determine if a person is dreaming or not.

According to the podcast, we aren't sure what's going on in our brain during lucid dreaming. One prediction is that maybe the part of our brain which is connected to our logic is supposed to be "asleep," but it's possible that it "wakes up" while REM sleep, so that dreaming and logic are both working at the same time, enabling the dreamer to recognize the dream situation for what it is.

The grand idea of lucid dreaming is all about control. In your dream, you could consciously decide to visit a specific place, say, Italy, France -- and your dream would obey the waking mind. The possibility of controlling the mind even in sleep has led some researchers to consider lucid dreaming as a treatment for nightmares. One study showed that lucid dreaming helped a group of people having nightmares to have them less often.

There is a great debate over the subject of dream control. The majority of scientists say that it's not possible. But there are some scientists who argue that there's so much we don't know about the human mind that we can't make any conclusive judgments one way or the other.

According to the podcast there are several techniques that can help you to have lucid dreams. The first suggestion was to keep a diary near your bed. And when you wake up, write down what you have seen. Another good technique is that when you wake up from your dream, try to recall it. And when you go back to your sleep again, you keep in mind that you are going to see the same dream and it is quiet feasible, that you will go on dreaming the same dream.

This episode was very interesting for me, as I see dreams mostly every day. And the interesting fact is that sometimes I wake up and don’t see the whole dream. Then maybe after a week I can see the rest of my dream. Another interesting fact was that in the podcast one of the speakers said that once he saw a dream, where his teeth were pulling out of his mouth, it was amazing, as I have seen the same dream too. It was like a nightmare, and the awful thing is that I was seeing the same dream mostly every night for 3 months. Maybe it was connected with stress or I don’t know what, but, fortunately, I haven’t seen that dream for a long and I hope I will never see it again.

Individual differences: Deviance

My today’s post is based on  David Crystal "Encyclopedia of the English Language". I am going to talk about individual differences and deviances.

Individuality in language is a complex matter as each person has his own way of speaking. These differences arise depending on the variations in sex, physique, personality, background interest, and experience. Physical condition is important particularly in the terms of voice quality, as it is connected with the structure of our body and physique.

Another factors that influence our speech are educational history, occupational experience, and personal skills or tastes. They have impact on the use of habitual words and turn of phrases or certain kind of grammatical constructions. In my previous post I was talking about occupational varieties, where I mentioned that one’s occupation or profession has a great role on the way one speaks. Meaning that during your work, you involve some professional words into your lexicon, which, subsequently, become the part of the word stock you use while talking.

Personality also is observed in conversation, as some people are considered as very good conversationalists, while others are not very good at conversations. Some people are good at storytelling, letter writing, good speech making. While there are people who lack of these abilities. But in my opinion, not all of these factors are important in our everyday conversations, for example it is not important to be a good orator in order to interact with people, as the aim of our everyday speech is to share meanings and ideas.

Talking about individual differences in conversation, I would like to mention gender differences in conversation. I have written a literature review on this topic, so I can say that one’s gender also has a great role on the way one speaks, as men and women interpret the same thing differently (Tannen,1990).

i would like to share a short video, in order to make my post more interesting. This is a one minute video about individual differences in language learning.

Now I would like to talk about deviance. The notion of individual difference, which doesn’t conform to a rule or norm, is an aspect of what is commonly referred to as deviance.

Deviance produces instances which are totally unacceptable. For example please thanks, cat the etc.

There are different levels of deviance - degrees of departure from the norms which identify the various varieties of English, and from the structures they have in common. Slight degrees of deviance will be hard to identify.

In my opinion deviancy is hard to identify in our oral speech, as some people talk very fast and you should be very attentive in order to notice them, but in written language, they are noticed easier.

How mirror works

Today I have listened to a very interesting podcast about mirrors (http://www.howstuffworks.com/). According to it, people look at mirrors very often. Mirrors are able to reflect the full picture of a person.

 In ancient times people were going to ponds in order to see their reflections. Historians say, that first mirrors were found 6000 BC, in Turkey, Anatolia.
But it wasn’t like the contemporary mirror. They used polished obsidian as a reflective surface. Eventually, they started to produce more sophisticated mirrors made of copper, bronze, silver, gold and even lead. Mirrors like the contemporary ones did not come into being until the late Middle Ages. But at that time it was very difficult to make them and they were very expensive. It wasn't until the Renaissance, when the Florentines invented an easier way of making mirrors. They were more elaborated and were very clear. Moreover artists started to use them. Mirrors helped to emerge a new form of art: the self-portrait. The mirror makers were keeping the way of making them in a secret, moreover, their secrets were so precious, that who tried to sell their knowledge to foreign workshops were killed.

At this point, mirrors were still only affordable for the rich, but scientists had noticed some alternative uses for them in the meantime. As early as the 1660s, mathematicians noted that mirrors could potentially be used in telescopes.

The modern mirror is made by silvering, or spraying a thin layer of silver or aluminum onto the back of a sheet of glass. Mirrors can preserve the image that hit it, but they reflect the image in a reversed way. Imagine writing something on a sheet of paper in dark pen and then holding it up to a mirror. It looks backward.

I have found many interesting legends about mirrors on the web. They mirrors reflect our souls.

As the vampires do not have souls, they are not reflected in mirrors. Mirrors are covered out of respect for the dead during the Jewish mourning ritual of sitting shiva, but many people in the U.S., also in Armenia, cover their mirrors when someone dies. According to superstition, a mirror can trap a dying soul. A woman who gives birth and looks in a mirror too soon afterward will also see ghostly faces peek out from behind her reflection. What's more, rumor has it that if you go to a mirror on New Year's Eve with a candle in your hand and call out the name of a dead person in a loud voice, the power of the mirror will show you that person's face.

These are just rumors: don’t take them very close to your heart!

If you are interested in how the mirrors are made you can watch this video, that i have shared. I hope you will like it!

Occupational Varieties: Religious English

According to David Crystal Encyclopedia, the term “occupational dialect” is used as a specific language, which is associated with one’s occupation and profession. The linguistic features of occupational varieties may be as distinctive, as regional or class features, but they are only in temporary use.  They are part of a job, after which one do not use those words.
There are some people whose work has become part of their lives and personality, and have influenced their behavior, linguistically as well as socially, which means that they may use those words even after their work. But mostly when we stop working we stop using the language of work.

Any domain could be used to illustrate occupational linguistic distinctiveness, or identity (starting with factory workers, ending with doctors or musicians). The distinctive word stock used by a special group of the same occupation, develops a slang and jargon which set them apart from outsiders. Jargon or Argot comprise a special category of words, which are used by a certain group of people who pertain to a specific field of science, profession, trade, occupation, etc. (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2007). The more an occupation is a part of a long-established tradition, the more it is likely to have accreted linguistic rituals which its members accept as a criterion of performance.

Now, I would like to talk about Religious English. There is a unique phonological identity in such genres as spoken by prayers, sermons, chants and litanies, including the unusual case of unison speech. There Is a strong grammatical identity, lexical identity, and highly distinctive discourse identity .

There are three main reasons that show why Religious English is probably the most distinctive of all occupational varieties.

The first reason is that it is consciously retrospective, in the way it constantly harts back to its origins. The next reason is that it is consciously prescriptive, concerned with issues of orthodoxy and identity, both textual and ritual. And, finally, it is consciously imaginative and exploratory, as people make their personal response to the claims of religious belief.

Although many commentators point to similarities between religious and legal English (in the way that historical tradition has sanctioned the use of archaism and ritual dialogue), religion occupational variety has far more formally identifiable subvarieties than any other use of English.

How hate works

In my previous post I discussed smile: how it makes everything easy and makes us feel good. Today I will write about hate and how it works.

According to my podcast there are three type of hate. The first one they called “just hate”, when you hate something and do nothing about it. In my opinion it can be referred to as an “innocent hate”.  The next type of hate is called ''a real hate'', which is based on fear. And, finally, the third type of hate is the result of anger. According to the podcast some people think that hate and anger can be considered as the same things, but there are others, that are sure that there are certain differences between hate and anger. They say that hate is brought on by humiliation, ill-treatment or being devalued, while anger is brought up by frustration. But others argue, saying that when people hate, it may also be the result of frustration. Thus, it is not true to say that frustration brings only to hatred.  As for me, I think that they do differ from each other definitely. As one can be angry with somebody, but he doesn't have to hate him. I can bring some examples from our everyday life, e.g.  When the taxi is late, you get very angry with the driver, but that doesn't mean that you hate him. After you leave the car you forget the driver. This means that anger is a short-term psychological condition, while hate is a long-lasting

The podcast presents a study which was conducted in 2008, in London University.  They polled 70 people and 90% said that there is someone who they hate. Then they showed them the pictures of people they hated. They found out that the area of cortex in our brain, which is associated with judgment and critical thinking, started to activate. While when you see the picture of someone you love, this area of the cortex remains less active. When you see someone you hate, you tend to criticize them.

It is important to talk about group hate. In recent modern history there are some vivid examples of group hate, for example during the period of World War II fascists were making people to hate others. They were giving a lot of data by identifying the drawbacks of the others and making them hate and act like they hate them. It is called brain washing.

A question may arise in our mind. Is hate a mental illness? Our understanding of hate is incomplete because our understanding of the things that we do that we associate with hate is also incomplete. There was a study which showed the percentages of people who people hate most. Friends make up 23%, family members 12%, ex-boyfriends 12%, within the family fathers are hated 40%, mothers 20%, mothers in laws 30%, and, finally, siblings 3%.

I really hope that these percentages will decrease over time, as I believe, that the less there will be hate in our lives the happier we will live. 

QUOTATIONS, PROVERBS AND ARCHAISMS

Words can alive overnight, but they take decades to die (David Crystal,). No one can be certain about the death and the birth of a word. People use words in order to express their thoughts and ideas. Many of those expressions or sentences have remained in the memory of people and over time have become quotations.

Anything which someone has said or wrote, can be considered as a quotation, but the term usually refers to those instances which have become ‘famous’ over time.

For example, ‘’To be or not to be’’ and “Let me see one” are extracts from Hamlet, but only the first one is considered as a quotations. It is important to distinguish quotations from catch phrases. Though catch phrases are species of quotations, they tend to be of spoken origin and very short. While quotations alive from written language and tend to be longer. Also catch words can be changed over time, while when an utterance settles down as a quotation there is no capability for change. Also, I’s like to add, that quotations can be used in our lexicon in order to make our speech beautiful and interesting. Here are some interesting quotations.

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

- Benjamin Franklin

Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.

- Confucius

Knowledge talks, wisdom listens.

- Jimi Hendrix

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."

- Oscar Wilde

I cannot believe that God would choose to play dice with the universe."

- Albert Einstein

If you like quotations, you can click here and read a lot of interesting articles.

Proverbs differ from quotations in the terms that the origin of a proverb,

in most cases, is unknown. They convey the notion of a piece of traditional wisdom, handed down by previous generations. The effectiveness of a proverb is that they are short, brief and direct. Here are some examples of proverbs:

Once bitten, twice shy.

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Another day, another dollar.

Never trust a fellow, that wears a suit.

According to David Crystal an ‘’archaism is a feature of an older state of the language, which continues to be used while retaining the aura of its spirit’’. Most often they are used in historical novels, plays, poems and films about such topics, such a king Arthur or Robin Hood. For example,

Afore Before

Agone Ago

Sith Since

somedeal Somewhat

As I love history very much, it was interesting for me to know how British kings and also ordinary people of that time were speaking. I have found an interesting bookmark, where archaic words are listed. If you are interested in it too, you can click here and look at the list yourself. I hope you will find it useful.

Smile and the whole world will smile with you!!!

Today I am going to share a very possitive post about smiling. It's not a great invention that smile makes us happy and many unbearabale situations become quiet bearable when we start smiling.

According to my podcast(http://www.howstuffworks.com/), there are two types of smiles. The first one is the genuine smile, which is also called ''natural smile''. When a person smiles genuinely, his muscles connect to his/her brain and also to his/her sole. This means that a genuine smile comes from the bottom of ones heart. It is accompanied with feelings and emotions. The key feature here is that in a genuine smile eyes are involved, while they are absent when a smile is fake. In a fake smile only mouth is involved and there can be no emotions. A genuin smile is the result of a possitive inner condition.

In 80s a proffessor called Robert Sejean published a study, where he says, that when a person smiles, his facial mimics have the same look as if one says long ''eee'', whereas when a person is frown his face has an expression like he is saying ''ooo''. There was also a study which showed that when a person looks to some pictures of people who are smiling, he or she becomes happier and subconsciously start smiling too.

Smile changes the tempreture of our body, it reduces the pressure in our blood. The cooler the temperature is in our brain, the happier we are.When we are frown our muscles start to activated and the temperature in our blood starts to increase. Another interesting thing is that smiling helps the immune system to work better. When we smile, our immune function starts to improve, possibly because we are more relaxed. Also smile attracts people. According to Charles Gordy, ''A smile is an inexpensive way to change your looks''.

I liked this quotation very much and I can add, that even when an ugly person smiles, it brings some light to his/her face and he or she looks prettier. While frowns, scowls and grimaces all push people away.

Smile makes you feel good. Even if you're feeling a little blue, you can insert happy thoughts into your mind and smile. The smile will trick your mind into feeling better, as endorphins are released to reduce physical or emotional stress. From my own experience I agree with this point definitely. Whenever I am gloomy, I think about happy moments of my life and these enjoyable memories bring happiness to me. In addition, I want to share a very famous song about smile. I hope you will enjoy it!

Taboo and Swear words

My post is based on a chapter from David Crystal Encyclopedia. It is about taboo and swear words in English. Before starting, I would like to apologize, for using some taboo and swearing words in order to make my post more descriptive.
Taboo language comprise a special category of words, which people avoid using in polite society, either they feel them harmful or feel them embarrassing or offensive. According to David Crystal Encyclopedia there are hundreds of taboo words and phrases, but the semantic range of referents that are considered taboo is limited in scope. They represent a specific category of taboo for example we should avoid using taboo words when talking about sexual acts and its consequences, body parts, serious health issues like cancer, death and dying and religion.
The offensiveness of the words depend on the context, as one word in one context can be a taboo but in another case it can be used without displeasing anyone. There are several ways of avoiding a taboo item.

In older writing the taboo words were part-spelled (f__k, bl__). Now, everyday method is to express the taboo topic in a vague or indirect way, which is called euphemism. For example, fall asleep (die), after a long illness (cancer), adult video (pornography), tired and emotional (drunk). Words that are taboo in one locale can be acceptable in another. In the 1830s the words like corset, shirt, leg and woman were taboo, while in Britain they weren't. Woman was considered to be addressed only to lower or less refined classes of female human-kind (An introduction to language, Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams,2007). This shows that taboos change over time. Now woman and other taboo words of that time are acceptable and are used in America.
The language of taboo, the language of abuse (invective), and the language of swearing sometimes may overlap and coincide. For example, to call someone shit is to use a taboo word as a term of abuse, and if it is said with emotional force it may be considered as an act of swearing. But this is not true for all cases. There are certain differences between these three types of language. For example, wimp is a term of abuse which is neither a taboo word nor a swear word.

And Heck is a swear word which is neither a taboo nor a invective. Thus, we may conclude, that swearing is an emotive outburst, which gives relief and relaxation. A lot of swearings do not have any meaning. They are used only to express wide range rather than making sense (e.g. fucking hell). It is important to mention that swearing reduces stress: those who swear suffer less from stress than those who do not (After H.E. Ross, 1960).
After reading this chapter and during writing this post I started to think about my health. I don't use such words, but maybe it's time to start using some. Maybe in future the stress will accumulate in me and cause some health problems? Please, leave feedback, as I am very interested in your opinion.

Motivating students to learn

Today I am going to write about motivation. I consider it as the key role in learning process so I am very interested in it. Moreover, during my writing course I wrote my paper on motivational techniques and methods, so it was interesting also listen to a podcast where some ESL teachers were talking about it.

According to Dornyei(2006) “Motivation is an abstract, hypothetical concept that we use to explain why people think and behave as they do. It is the inner power or energy that pushes toward acting, performing actions and achieving goals”. In the podcast(http://www.eslteachertalk.com/) the teachers say that there are three key points which influence on the motivational level of the students. The first one is self-motivation, which means that teachers should be motivated themselves. I have read about this in Zoltman Dornyie’s book Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom,

where the author points, that if a teacher is thrilled with the subject, this enthusiasm will transfer to the students for sure. One of the teachers in the podcast mentioned a very interesting idea, he said that when teachers enter a classroom they should feel themselves as if in a stage, where they must forget about their personal problems and should wear a happy face in order to make their students do whatever they do with pleasure.
The second key point is that the teachers should encourage their students. All students, more or less, are motivated to learn, but the teachers are the ones who should and can increase even a minute of motivation (McCombs, 1994). In the podcast the teachers say that in a groups of young children teachers can play games, talk about their favorite cartoons, friends. Another thing that motivates students is praising. But this praising should not be meaningless. Feedbacks are also very important. When a student fails, the teacher can attribute the failure to a lack of effort e.g.,the teacher may say, “I don’t think you were really concentrating,” indicating a belief in the student’s ability to succeed (Stipek, 1993).
Finally the third point is the environment. Only in a supportive classroom children can feel themselves at ease and reach a success. By mentioning the environment they mean both physical and psychological. It is important to mention that both teacher-student and student-student relationship can have great influence on motivation. I hope you liked my post and if you are interested you can click here and read a book which gives a lot of information about motivation. I hope you will find it helpful.

Foreign Borrowings

According to David Crystal Encyclopedia when a language takes lexemes from another language, the new items are called loanwords or borrowings. While many languages try to avoid borrowing foreign words, English seems to welcome them, as over 350 languages are recorded as the sources of its vocabulary.
Every historical event influenced English language a lot. Loanwords appeared in English even before the Anglo-Saxons arrival. There were peak periods of word borrowing activities in English.

First loan words were Celtic loans. After the adoption of Christianity Latin became the dominant language to influence English. It included in its vocabularies words like church, bishop, school, priest, etc. Viking invasion brought 2000 Scandinavian words. After the Norman invasion the size of loans were doubled. By the end of the renaissance the growth of the vocabulary, especially by Latin, doubled the lexicon again. In my previews post I was discussing the emergence of the Black English. The importation of the black slaves also brought many new words to the English lexicon like negro, African-American, black etc.
This process continued during the Middle English period in 1950s and after English became world language the borrowings showed a dramatic upturn. It was the result of regular communication with other cultures. I was watching a video clip on youtube about loanwords, where a professor was bringing some examples of such loanwords like dollar, which was a Flemish word called thaler. Alcohol is an arabic word al-kuhul, firstly it was used as medical equipment. Ketchup is an Indonesian word kecap. Here are other examples of loanwords.
Coffee (Ethiopia Ethiopian) coffee beans were first discovered in the town of Kaffa, Ethiopia.
Jaguar (Native Paraguay and Southern Brazil Guarani) a kind of big jungle cat.
Panda (Nepal Nepali) a type of rare black-and-white bear.
Penguin (Wales Welsh) an antarctic sea-bird -originally meaning 'white head'.
Robot (Czechoslovakia Czech) an intelligent machine -originally meaning 'worker'.
Sugar (Ancient India Sanskrit) -originally 'sarkara'.
Tattoo (Tahiti Tahitian) inked design forced into the skin.
Tomato (South America Aztec Nahuatl) a sweet red vegetable -originally 'tomatl'.
Zombie (Congo and Angola Kongo) dead-but-still-alive -originally the name of a snake-god.
The definitions of these words can be found in Webster’s dictiories but if you are interested in loanwords, here you can find a comprehensive list of them.

Black English

Black English emergence was a result of the importation of black people to the Caribbean islands and the American coasts to work in sugar plantations. From the early 17^th century, ships from Europe travelled to the West African coast, where they exchanged cheap goods for black slaves. Then they brought them to America where they were exchanged for such commodities as sugar, rum and molasses.

By the time slavery was abolished in 1865, during the U.S civil war, the number of slaves in America was about 4 million. In order to hinder groups to plot rebellion slave-traders were told to bring slaves with different language background. The result was the growth of different pidgin forms of communication. Later on, it became the native language of the new generation. This creole English was rapidly spread through the southern plantations and many of the coastal islands. Moreover, some of them like the Indian speech moved all out side of the Caribbean and eventually was found in Canada, the USA and Britain. Meanwhile, as a consequence of Britain's political influence, British English was becoming a prestige variety throughout the area

The vernacular varieties of Black English have been in the centre of attention recently. Linguistics say that land-owners have picked a lot of habits and words from their slave, moreover black English began to appear in literary works such as those by Harrier Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain.

In my previous post I discussed Noah Webster, who himself  included many of these new african-american words in his dictionaries. I have found some of those words in Webster's dictionary (I haves discussed his dictionaries in my previous post), like the definition of word black, african-american, negro etc.

In the late 19th century black culture become known throughout the country, especially for its music. The linguist result was that many new words appeared, as whites picked up lively words from those who was singing, dancing and playing. We know that the founders of blues and jazz were black people. Recently I was watching the movie Cadillac Records which explores the musical era from early 1940s to the late 1960. It illustrates how black singers like Muddy Waters, Chuk Berry and Etta James became popular. It helped me to visualise how difficult was for them to break through and become famous. Their music was so distinguished that the members of my generation, like me knows them and still listens to their music. 

The types of reading

This post is based on a podcast of the school of effective teaching about reading. Dr. Brown illustrates the differences between reading for finding information and reading for constructing meaning. According to him reading means to understand, interpret and use the text. Teaching reading means to help students to construct meaning from the text, which is different from finding knowledge. When students read to find knowledge they search for words or phrases to answer a question, whereas in order to find meaning students must evaluate the text and perform some type of mental manipulation.  In order to help students to construct meaning teachers may ask different questions which will make students think about the text. This is the difference between finding knowledge and constructing meaning.

According to Dr. Brown “words are only words but it is us that gives these words meaning and power”. This was interesting for me as I hadn’t read or thought about these differences before. I think that reading is the key feature of academic success. As Mark Twain said “the man who doesn’t read books has no advantage over a man who cannot read them”. One cannot learn anything without reading a lot and this reading should be for finding meaning for sure. But I think that these two types of reading are related to each other. As when students read and find meaning they already get knowledge. I believe, that knowledge that students find should be meaningful for them in order to remain in their memory and become an unseparated part of their erudition.

Then Dr. Brown explains that when student reads, he reads the author’s concept map. While reading, the student tries to break and reconstruct the concept map in order to understand the author’s purpose. At the beginning they may need teacher’s directions, but later on they should do it themselves. He also mentions that reading and writing are connected, one supports the other. To support this idea he brings an example of a student, who used to read constantly, afterwards he was asked to write and his writing was pretty good. This proves that good reading and good writing support each other. I agree with this idea definitely, as my own experience has showed me the importance of reading for improving my writing skills. Particularly, reading helps people who have visual memory. I can say that for those people it is the best way to memorize the spelling and the structure of the words.

American English: New Nation, New Themes

According to The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English Language, during the second half of 18th century American scholars hold a great attention in the certain linguistic issues and developments which had occupied British scholars in the first half of the 18th century. In this post I am going to introduce Noah Webster and his influence on the development of American English.
Noah Webster(1758-1843),

was an American educator, lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author.In his English Dissertations on the English language (1789) he proposed the institution of an ‘American Standard’. He considered that ‘as an independent nation’ they should have their own system of language. England was at ‘too great distance’ in order to be a model for them, and in a new continent many new words may have come to the language which were absent in British English. I agree with his opinion without any doubts, because America includes many different nations which for sure, have brought to America a lot of new words. Noah Webster considered the spelling reform as the first step in that direction. In his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) he writes that no great changes should be made which may cause inconveniences or cross out radicals of the language. But written language must be accommodated to the spoken language. In his dictionary he suggested some spelling directions which was admitted with suspicion(e.g. he suggested to spell labour without u because it was absent in laborious, also omit u in curious, because it is not used in curiosity etc.). After his first dictionary Webster went on elaborating it, he travelled a lot throughout Europe and, finally, in 1828 appeared his second dictionary - An American Dictionary of the English language,

which contained 70.000 words, whereas the first one included only 28.000 words. The work greatly improved the coverage of scientific and technical terms, as well as terms to do with American culture and institutions (such as congress and plantation), also added a great deal encyclopedic information. This dictionary made Webster a ‘household’ name in the USA. It was criticizes by British for its Americanism, especially in matters of spelling. But it was a great work which gave US English an identity.
His work was so outstanding that even here, in Armenia schoolchildren learn about him and I am not an exception. At our school we were taught that Webster was the founder of American English and he is the one who is responsible for the way that Americans now speak and write.