Buna, ce mai faceti si Webster

M-am mutat de pe weblog. Nu pentru ca am avut probleme cu weblog, ci pentru ca nu am mai scris de mult timp in respectivul blog si …nu stiu, nu imi vine sa mai scriu la el, desi ma simt tentata cateodata sa las cate o insemnare. Asa ca m-am gandit ca ar fi bine sa o iau de la capat. Incet-incet, voi incerca sa imi transfer din insemnarile de pe weblog.

In orice caz, ceea ce m-a indemnat sa scriu din nou a fost o amintire. Mi-am adus aminte ca, acum ceva timp, citisem un articol din revista “The New Yorker” – un articol care mi-a placut, m-a amuzat si mi s-a parut instructiv. Este un articol despre Noah Webster, cel care a creat primul dictionar al “limbii americane”. Revista “The New Yorker” imi place mult, pentru ca reuseste sa aiba materiale relevante, inteligente si amuzante in pofida faptului ca nu fac parte din publicul tinta. Totodata, e interesant sa vezi cat de multe persoane citeaza “The New Yorker” ca sursa a unor informatii (de cele mai multe ori culturale) relevante. In fine, Kundera si Sempe sunt printre contribuitori asa ca…ca fan al Micului Nicolas, e imposibil sa ma abtin.

Revenind la articolul despre Webster…mi-am adus aminte de el datorita unei discutii de pe blogul curtezanei si a unui articol despre cum se afla cuvintele “cool” in noul DOOM (dictionar ortografic, orto-bla-bla) si despre “noile Chirite” mentionate in prefata DOOM.

Mi-am adus aminte cum, pe la 1800, existau aceleasi probleme:

“In June of 1800, Noah Webster’s proposal for an American dictionary made national news. No news might have been better. Within a week, a Philadelphia newspaper editor called Webster’s idea preposterous (it is “perfectly absurd to talk of the American language”) and his motives mercenary (“the plain truth is . . . that he means to make money”). Two American dictionaries, published just months before, had been badly drubbed, too. The first promised “a number of words in vogue not found in any dictionary.” One reviewer, dismissing “sans culotte,” “hauter,” and “composuist” as, respectively, French, not even a word, and just plain silly, deemed the dictionary “at best, useless.” No better were notices of the Massachusetts minister Caleb Alexander’s “Columbian Dictionary,” containing “Many NEW WORDS, peculiar to the United States.” “A disgusting collection” of idiotic words coined by “presumptuous ignorance,” one critic wrote, referring to Americanisms like “wigwam,” “rateability,” “caucus,” and “lengthy” (lengthy? what’s next, “strengthy”?). “The Co-lumbian Dictionary,” as he saw it, was nothing more than “a record of our imbecility.”"

Totodata, ceea ce m-a uns pe mine la inima, a fost reputatia lui Webster:

But Webster’s fame was always strange, even before he died, in New Haven in 1843, at the age of eighty-four. Outside his family, nearly everyone who knew him found him in-suffer-able, and strangers who thought they admired him usually didn’t: they’d mistaken him for another Webster, the fiery orator and Massachusetts senator. (If he had published an autobiography, it would have been called “I Am Not Daniel!”)

Pana una-alta, mi-a trecut durerea de cap, pt care scrisul in blog a fost mereu un medicament bun …