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[00:00:04]

Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh, there's Chuck, and this is short stuff and the one where we get into explaining why some places you go to see a movie or a play are spelled theater t, e, r, e and others are spelled theater t e a TR and has nothing to do with one being futuristic or anything like that.

[00:00:30]

And I love this because like when we go on live tour, Chuck, yeah, it's almost invariably theater, but every once in a while you run up against a place, a venue that spells it theater with the E.R. instead of R.E. and it's it's mind boggling. It's it's probably the the worst thing that happens on tours is having to deal with the differentiation between those two.

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Yeah, it's funny. I had a feeling you were going to mention that, because when we do our our tour website, there are through there are all panels that Squarespace, um, I always have to go back and double check.

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And you're right, it usually is r e it seems like and I like the way that looks on paper and on a billboard, it looks very regal.

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It reminds you of how rich. Yeah. Rich like red deep red velvet curtains and things like that.

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And it's like an evening with Josh and Chuck, not just Josh and Chuck like. Yeah, come see Josh and Chuck if you want. Who cares. You know, that's the E.R. version. The R.E. version is, like you said, an evening with Josh and Chuck.

[00:01:40]

That's right. So this all came about from one man and his name was Noah Webster. And at first I was thinking, wait a minute, did Mel Gibson play him in a movie? But I looked it up and that was the guy who was writing the Oxford English Dictionary.

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Oh, really? Not Noah Webster who wrote Webster's Dictionary.

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What book was that movie? Was that the man with two faces now is the professor and the madman? I think I have never heard of that.

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Oh, OK. So I have so I've heard the story before that there was a dictionary out there. I thought it was the American English Dictionary, not not the Oxford one, but like there was a guy who was in an asylum for decades and contributed significantly to that dictionary. Right. That's the one. Yeah, I haven't seen it, but I've heard I've heard good things. I didn't know Mel Gibson was in it. Yeah. The famous antisemite.

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Right.

[00:02:36]

So we're talking instead about the other dictionary, not the Oxford English Dictionary, the American English Dictionary created by Noah Webster, who turns out to have been a bit of a polymath back in the eighteenth century.

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Cool dude, from what I understand.

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Yeah, he seems like a quite the Renaissance man. He was born in Connecticut and 1758, and after the Revolutionary War started in 1775, he was in college at Yale Law ends. He's in a militia like a patriot militia graduates and then becomes a teacher and then an attorney and then started to say, your Articles of Confederation are garbage. And in the way they're they're laid out. And it would be much better if you did these things.

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Yeah, I couldn't find what he was credited with as far as that goes, although I did see some free speech stuff. He may have been a big advocate of free speech.

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Well, he was a member of an anti slavery society, so he was a founder of the Connecticut Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

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Yeah. So that tracks. And he also helped found Amherst College in Massachusetts, but he's known as Dictionary Guy.

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Yeah. And he had this whole thing where he felt like America needed to come into its own intellectually or celebrate its culture more intellectually, and that a good way to do that was to kind of separate itself, education wise, from the old British system in the old British books and used brand new beautiful American books.

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And there weren't any at the time. So he set about creating one himself. He found out like actually little American school kids are learning from the old British books, and he was very upset about that. So he said, you know what, I'm going to create something different.

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Yeah. And pre dictionary, which will get to after the break, he wrote something called The American Spelling Book, which was also referred to as the blue back speller, I guess. And a blue cover on the back is the only I can think of. I was referring to a character who had a blue back in the book, if he so but it was a big success.

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It sold about 100 million copies by 1883, which is just astounding in. We know now because we have a book that is not sold 100 million copies, no, no, Chuck, it was 100 million copies by 1883. So in know years, that's really astounding.

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And it's still in print today. Yeah, but it helps standardize American English for teachers. And then he thought, this is great. But what I really want to do is write a dictionary and we're going to take a little break and tell you about that result right after this.

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Good stuff. Joshua. News with a new perspective I'm working with in Washington, D.C., news with a black perspective. I'm Mike Stevens in Tampa. The Black Information Network is the first all news, audio and digital network for and by the black community dedicated to 24/7 news and information. I'm Julius White in Atlanta. Get the podcast and get the biggest news and business stories delivered to you every morning. I'm Vanessa Tyler in New York. Subscribe to the Black Information Network daily and wake up with the latest from the Black Information Network.

[00:06:08]

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[00:06:41]

So change. OK, so Noah Webster is riding high on his blue back speller in the success of it, and he's he's done something he wanted to do, which was help the British guys, American school kids learning. That was a good first start. But then he said, you know, yes, I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way, etc.. But I also think that we need to get to the adults as well.

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We need to just basically create a tome, a text that is the definitive guide to American English, because everybody's running around here saying things a little differently, but we're still spelling them the British way.

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And that has to end, say, Noah Webster.

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That's right. And it ended up being that 70000 word dictionary, the American Dictionary, I'm sorry, an American Dictionary of the English language is the full title. And he said, you know, the word color, it doesn't need that. You you don't hear it. It's useless.

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We're wasting ink. Drop it, plough. You want to plow a field, just go out and play O.W. that field. Don't play that field because that's a waste of time.

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Write what you want to do is go hit it with the W, the PLO W and I'm very grateful to him that we, we have words like draft spelled with an F rather than a yoga or you know, plough spelled the right way and colour without a U or honor without a U. It all makes sense. And I guess it had to do with the like I said, the way that people were pronouncing words in America. We're still saying the same word.

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But we were we were saying it slightly differently. So it made sense to kind of alter the spelling. Some words he went after, though, did not stick it. Did they check?

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Yeah. It looks so funny on paper. I wish they would have stuck because he proposed spelling tunt t u n g which for some reason just looks infinitely dirtier or sexual for some reason.

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Yeah. To me and women W.O. me and he proposed should be spelled wiifm and I'm sorry w i m m e n women. Yeah. Which sounds derogatory.

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Almost like Tandler sounds dirty women. Sounds like who cares. Kind of spelling, you know what I'm saying. So I'm glad that those two stayed the same.

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Yeah. And it just looks very strange. Of course it had, they made those changes. We would look at tongue NATO in guey and think that looks very like draft Deira. We would think that looks weird because it's just what, you know, growing up. But theater is what we're here to talk about. And theater was one of those, uh, I think pre Webster. It was always R.E. in that, right?

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Yes, there was there was no other way to spell theater except Attari until Webster came along and said nuts to that. Yes, swap them out, but it's this is an example of one that kind of half took, there is no correct way you can use either one. There is a notion within the world of theater that if you're talking about the world of theater, you say are you spell it with an R e, but you actually perform at a theater with an E R and I think A kind of knew that.

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But that's not even, you know, the hard and fast rule, which I mean, that makes sense to me.

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But I don't think, Chuck, I've ever encountered anybody who actually like any any normal person like just walking around that believe that or that held that that viewpoint of, you know, I mean, I think I've heard that, like I said, theater with an might refer to the industry of putting on plays and shows.

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But I've never seen anyone. Right. You know, in the theater we perform at a theater and then spell that two different ways.

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Yeah, I just I've never encountered it before, but it does make sense. And apparently some people do kind of see the world like that. But for the rest of us, we're just going to stay muddled and confused till the end of time, swapping out R, E and E R for theater, because in the end, it doesn't really matter.

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Whoever you're talking to is going to know what you're talking about. And if you're a prescriptivist, know a descriptivist, that's that's language. That's what counts. That's right.

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And I think the end result is hopefully sometime next fall and winter, you might be able to see and spend an evening with Josh and Chuck at a theater.

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Right.

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Or if you just kind of feeling super American at a theater.

[00:11:45]

Right. Well, since we said theater two different ways, I think everybody it's clear that this is the end of short stuff and short stuff, says Arius. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio, is it the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows?