Re: The Postman never slices twice

On May 3, 10:32 am, "wm.k...@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <wm.k...@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

But all of this begs the question of whether the purpose of the
earliest dictionaries was, in addition to defining words (especially
unusual ones), in whole or part to standardize spelling. Could it not
have been the other way around, viz, that the invention of the
dictionary (among other things) made standardized spelling necessary?

English Orthographies -- books prescribing "correct" spellings for
words -- proliferate from the mid-1500s on. The better of them provide
considerable information about the then-current pronunciation of
English, as well as observations and guesses about the relationship of
spelling to pronunciation; the worse simply give long lists of words,
especially those of dubious spelling. Of course, what is "correct"
changes drastically from the 1500s to the 1700s -- indicating that, at
least at first, the Orthographies had little impact.

Standardized spelling has never been strictly necessary, but I suppose
that the advent of printing, and the production of large numbers of
works by a single printshop, made a degree of standardization both
natural and desirable. Any commonly read, mass-produced book (such as
a Bible or prayer-book) would then influence readers' ideas of correct
spelling. The last really major changes in spelling occurred in the
middle 1600s, with smaller emendations occurring thereafter (e.g.
perswade, asswage > persuade, assuage; shew > show; -ick (itself a
modification of older -ique) > -ic). By about 1800 a spelling
effectively equivalent to the present-day one is entrenched (seemingly
permanently, regardless of subsequent changes in English
pronunciation).

.

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