Thoughts on my Library Exhibit Exploration

It might be too late to get credit for my visit to the Bible exhibit, but I did go earlier, I just forgot to post on it, until I reviewed the posts I have made and it wasn't in there.  I even tried to go to the print museum, but that failed when I arrived 1 hour after it closed.  Who closes at 2 p.m.? So then I visited the HBLL exhibit instead. 

Anyway....

Learning is the Purpose... Or is it to Produce a Paper?

A master of comic rhyme in our time, I had to add him in. :-)

I have had a marvelous time learning all about Rhyming and its origins and development in the English language, but no matter how much I research, I can't seem to find the information I am looking for.  I can't find evidence to support the connections that I have hunches for, but I have found a lot of great information on the device of rhyme and its history throughout our society.  So I am afraid that I am going to write a thesis paper on what I have been learning about even though it doesn't necessarily correlate with the topic assigned to me. 

(I am building my argument... please keep reading...)

The Story of the Dictionary (and my discovery of it)

The English Dictionary is the second most purchased and most used book behind the Bible only.  Of course, there isn't just one dictionary or version of it, just like there are multiple versions of the Bible.  Nevertheless, it is a popular book.  But as one renown dictionary maker (also known as a lexicographer) said, it is meant to be browsed in, not read cover to cover. 

There are several parts of language, and one of them is the actual words that are used, the vocabulary or the lexicon of a language.  This is what a dictionary is meant to help with at its fundamental level: allow people to understand the lexicon of the language.  That is why the first dictionaries were what we would call translation dictionaries and have two different languages in them, usually comparing Latin to some other language.  Later the idea developed to define the vocabulary of one language, creating monolingual dictionaries.  Then the development of ordering a dictionary in alphabetical order was introduced by Englishman Robert Cawdery, which became such an intrinsic part of dictionaries that books that don't do anything similar to a dictionary (define the lexicon) have acquired the title because of the alphabetical listing of their entries.  Then, finally there was the idea of an American dictionary, because our version of English was different from the British, and that's how Merriam-Webster became a household name. 

But really, you don't want to hear the story of the dictionary.  You would much rather hear about my story in the library finding out about dictionaries.  I dislike the fact that we have to put our annotated bibliography in alphabetical order, because that doesn't fit the order of the story, so I have numbered them in chronological order if you want a continuous story of discovery. 

Ah my old nemesis...Spelling

All my life I have been a horrible speller. Going to bed early on Christmas eve was never a problem because my family would always have a giant family Scrabble competition into the wee hours of the morning (thought still retiring before St Nick made an appearance). Who wants to be awake for that? When I learned that spelling and punctuation were not standardized in the distant past, I thought it was the most brilliant idea ever. But, like many of you, when I try to read old documents I shake my fists and shout to the heavens "had these people no sense of language?" Standardization is important for more universal understanding and this standardization has been facilitated and fostered by print and publishing.

I have compiled an annotated bibliography of useful sources on the standardization of spelling. I hope you find it informative.