Nah, Webster really did drop the ‘u’ and changed a lot of spelling. He also learned a lot of languages since back then there were many, many different languages/dialects in America at the time and he wanted to make it easier as he changed spellings, such as swapping ‘re’ to ‘er’ for phonetics. There was also a lot of anti-British sentiment at the time of course which certainly would have motivated acceptance.
Webster is definitely also credited for this in histories and not newspapers outside of anecdotes.
“it is often assumed that characteristically American spellings were invented by Noah Webster. He was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in the United States, but he did not originate them. Rather […] he chose already existing options such as center, color and check for the simplicity, analogy or etymology”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
Either way he didn’t change the spellings he popularized them…
“Webster did attempt to introduce some reformed spellings, as did the Simplified Spelling Board in the early 20th century, but most were not adopted.”
If we’re doing Wikipedia as the sole citation then:
In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. By 1807, he began work on a more extensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language, which took twenty-six years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-eight languages, including Old English, Gothic, German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Welsh, Russian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. His goal was to standardize American English, which varied widely across the country. They also spelled, pronounced, and used English words differently.
As time went on, Webster changed the spellings in the book to more phonetic ones. Most of them already existed as alternative spellings.[34] He chose spellings such as defense, color, and traveler, and changed the re to er in words such as center. He also changed tongue to the older spelling tung, but this did not catch on.
Furthermore your quote doesn’t actually have a relevant citation:
He was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in the United States, but he did not originate them. Rather […] he chose already existing options such as center, color and check for the simplicity, analogy or etymology”
Though in context of the previous paragraph seems to imply that this was an opinion that the wikipedia article came to simply because there was a previous work that argued specifically for ‘or’ in place of ‘our’ but again, it appears to simply be their opinion based on an assumption.
Nah, Webster really did drop the ‘u’ and changed a lot of spelling. He also learned a lot of languages since back then there were many, many different languages/dialects in America at the time and he wanted to make it easier as he changed spellings, such as swapping ‘re’ to ‘er’ for phonetics. There was also a lot of anti-British sentiment at the time of course which certainly would have motivated acceptance.
Webster is definitely also credited for this in histories and not newspapers outside of anecdotes.
I’d also heard it suggested that the date was written the “British” way, and post civil war was when they started writing them incorrectly.
“it is often assumed that characteristically American spellings were invented by Noah Webster. He was very influential in popularizing certain spellings in the United States, but he did not originate them. Rather […] he chose already existing options such as center, color and check for the simplicity, analogy or etymology” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
Either way he didn’t change the spellings he popularized them…
“Webster did attempt to introduce some reformed spellings, as did the Simplified Spelling Board in the early 20th century, but most were not adopted.”
Edit, I messed up markdown
If we’re doing Wikipedia as the sole citation then:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue-backed_speller
Furthermore your quote doesn’t actually have a relevant citation:
Though in context of the previous paragraph seems to imply that this was an opinion that the wikipedia article came to simply because there was a previous work that argued specifically for ‘or’ in place of ‘our’ but again, it appears to simply be their opinion based on an assumption.