Creator
Noah Webster
Title
Observations on Language, and on the Errors of Class-Books.
Coverage
New Haven
Publisher
P. Babcock
Date
1839
Description
This rambling speech before the New York Lyceum teems with cranklike assertions of error in “all the leading books.” Webster asserted that “most of our grammars tell us there are in the English six tenses,” but he announced that “if there are any tenses at all, there are twelve.” He didn’t even say what they were. Our educational system, he said, created “smatterers, knowing a little of every branch of study, but acquainted with none. These mistakes demand correction.”