Noah Webster originally tried changing the spelling of hard ch words to begin with k, as in karacter, but the shift never caught on, as is usually the case with spelling reforms. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “”Ch” Speling Reform”
When the great lexicographer Noah Webster decided to establish some new changes to English spelling in the Americas, one of the changes he wanted to make was to take these words that are in English from Greek origins, where we have a C-H pronounced with a K, and just go ahead and replace them in spelling with a K.
So a word like chorus would have been spelled K-O-R-U-S.
Oh, really?
Or the word character might have been spelled K-A-R-A-C-T-E-R.
Of course, this is one of those places where his spelling reform didn’t work at all.
But it’s interesting to go back through his notes and see that he had a very vast plan for changing the American English.
So if all of his changes had succeeded, our English would probably look as different from British English as, say, Haitian Creole does from French.
It’s really interesting.
That is fascinating stuff.
But very few of the changes he wanted to make actually lasted in American English.
Yeah, just a few.
Just a few.
I wonder why.
Because we’re stubborn.
And also, at the time he was wanting to make these changes, a lot of what we were reading was British.
Right, right, right.
And spelling reform tends to be a bust anyway, right?
It almost always fails because the kind of people who lead it tend to be pompous and misguided.
Yeah, yeah.
Although Teddy Roosevelt tried, too.
Pompous.
Maybe not misguided, but definitely pompous.
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