Numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas in arts and science, and some intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe, will introduce new words into the American tongue. These causes will produce, in a course of time, a language in North America, as different from the future language of England, as the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German, or from one another.
—Noah Webster, American lexicographer, Dissertations on the English Language, 1789

Posted on February 29, 2004 at 11:21 PM

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