In the new Oxford History of English Lexicography, we find the claim: “Languages declare their independence by creating dictionaries.” We are more used to the idea that independence is proclaimed by seizing the presidential palace or the armory, but this idea has something to commend it.

During the 19th century, countries again and again used language as a vehicle for expressing national identity. In Norway, where Danish had been the usual written language, Ivor Aanson promoted Nynorsk and Alf Torp published the Nynorsk etymologisk Ordbok in 1919. In Czechoslovakia, linguistic independence came through Czech-German dictionaries. (The Austrian empire ruled a multilingual set of states through German.) But the greatest of these revolutions is the creation of Modern Hebrew from its beginnings as a language of religion (and little else) to a full-scale language used for all purposes; its most copious dictionary is “Hebrew Old and New” by Eli’ezer Ben-Yehuda.

‫Our own linguistic independence was proclaimed by Noah Webster in 1783 just as the Treaty of Paris was shucking off the shackles of monarchy. An ardent patriot, Webster thought Europe was mired in folly, corruption, and tyranny. “For America in her infancy to adopt the present maxims of the old world, would be to stamp the wrinkles of decrepit age upon the bloom of youth and to plant the seeds of decay in a vigourous constitution.”

Webster’s compatriots did not instantly embrace his ideas.

Many thought English was a single language and that few American innovations were anything other than blunders and bad usage. Nonetheless, Webster pressed doggedly ahead. In 1806 he published the Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, and thanks to e-texts you can see all the words employing “American” in their definitions. There’s no disputing that butternut and moose are American words and merit being in the dictionary.

In 1828, he published his American Dictionary of the English Language and founded a dynasty of Webster dictionaries that comes down to this day.

Other nations within the pale of English speakers declared linguistic independence too. Among the first to do so was John Jamieson who believed that Scots English was the legitimate descendant of Old English and demonstrated his argument in his dictionary of 1808. Sassenachs and other southerners spoke only a dialect debased by French and other foreign tongues. In the 1960s, there appeared the Dictionary of Jamaican English and the Dictionary of Canadianisms, both thoroughly scholarly accounts of a distinctive variety of English. And more recently wonderful dictionaries have been published for New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and many other places with long linguistic histories.

The most recent declaration of linguistic independence comes from Sri Lanka with Michael Meyler’s Dictionary of Sri Lankan English (2007). Poor Meyler has suffered the same sort of abuse that was heaped on Webster. The entries were “old colonial slang” and mistakes, according to one newspaper reviewer. But just as butternut and moose were good American words, so too egg hopper and rambutan are beloved to Sri Lankans.

We welcome Sri Lanka to the federation of world English