I'm a young Fuggedy. I still have my cold, but fortunately for all of us, I have one

of my favorite old segments for you today that I recorded when I didn't sound like a

nasally frog. And at the end, I have a listener-familacked story. Here we go.

Have you ever wondered why the British spell color with a U and Americans don't? Or why

the British spell theater with an A or E at the end, an American spell it with an E or

at the end? I mean, we all know that these spelling differences exist, but not everyone

knows why they exist. Well, today we're going to find out. It turns out that Noah Webster,

of Webster's dictionary fame, is behind many, but not all, of the spelling differences

between British and American English. In his reasons for making the changes were as

much political and philosophical as linguistic. I was inspired to do this podcast by a book

I just finished, called The Forgotten Founding Father, Noah Webster's Obsession and the

Creation of an American Culture by Joshua Kendall. Now, I know many of you listening are not

Americans, but I hope you'll indulge me and end up finding this story as interesting

as I do. Noah Webster lived smack in the middle of the time when Americans were still trying

to form a country and figure out who they were. To give you some perspective, the United

States Constitution was ratified between the time Webster published his first spelling

book and when he started working on his famous dictionary. Americans were eager to break

with Britain as fully as possible and weren't even sure that English should be the primary

language. Nearly 10% of the population spoke German, so some people suggested that should

be our language. Others proposed Hebrew and others thought we should call our language

Colombian. Webster undertook his first big project, an American spelling book to replace

the British spelling book schools were using then, in part to settle the matter. It was

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