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.