by Derek Armstrong
William Carey’s childhood spelling dictionary was written during a time that could be considered a dictionary boom which started in 1596 with Edmund Coote’s The English Schoolmaster. Nathaniel Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum was written in 1730, Samuel Johnson’s Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language was written in 1747 and his A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755.[1] These works show that the interest in proper and correct writing and spelling was still on the rise, even as Carey was born and growing up. The actual title of the dictionary Carey used as a child is, The New Spelling Dictionary, Teaching To Write and Pronounce the English Tongue with Ease and Propriety; In which Each Word is accented according to its just and natural Pronunciation; the Part of Speech is properly distinguished, and The Various Senses are Ranged in one Line; with A List of Proper Names of Men and Women.
The spelling dictionary that Carey used was given to him by his father, and his father’s name is written on the inside of the first page. This item is arguably one of the most important within the Carey collection as it could be argued that without this dictionary, none of the rest of the collection would be there It was this dictionary that helped Carey learn the English language with the mastery that he did. Without his skills in his native tongue, he certainly would not have been able to translate any of the other works he did into any of the languages into which he translated them.
Carey’s The New Spelling Dictionary was donated to the Center for the Study of the Life and Work of William Carey, D.D. (1761-1834) by Calvin and Tillie Remmert, of Houston, Texas, in November of 2004.[2]
The impact of a spelling dictionary like The New Spelling Dictionary was undoubtedly related to the response of the public from which a drive to create it was found. With the interest ever increasing in correct spelling and correct pronunciation, a dictionary such as this one would have had widespread ramifications. The search to make the English language uniform, along with the interest to make the world uniformly British, could very well have fit hand-in-hand.
So the significance of this work, outside of the specific significance it holds for William Carey and the Carey Center, would be more likened to a drop in the larger pool of the advancement of the English language. Certainly it played its part in helping to standardize the language in a way similar to that of the other dictionaries and pronunciation books of the time.
Again, the importance of this particular book to Carey, and perhaps to the wider world at large, is inestimable. Along the path of Carey’s education and career, his copy of The New Spelling Dictionary was a very important stepping stone. Very directly the manner in which Carey learned to spell and how to spell, along with the particular definitions and ways he came to interpret words would affect him later on in life when translating the Bible, along with other works, into the various languages of India and beyond.
[1] No Lawful Standard…: The Evolution of English Dictionaries. http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/hel/helmod/dicty.html. Accessed on January 6, 2009.
[2] http://www.wmcarey.edu/carey/new/newnov2004.htm. Accessed on January 6, 2009.
Author Derek Armstrong can be contacted at derekmarmstrong@gmail.com
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