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Short Stuff: Is It Theater or Theatre? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and this is short stuff. Uh. And the one where
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: we get into explaining why some places you go to
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: see a movie or a play or spelled theater th
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: h E a t r E, and others are spelled
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: theater th h e a t e r and has
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with one being futuristic or anything like that.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: And I love this because like when we go on
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: live tour, Chuck, it's almost invariably theater, but um, there
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: every once in a while you run up against the
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: place of venue that spells it theater with the E
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: er instead of R e um, and it's it's mind boggling,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's probably the worst thing that happens on
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: tours that is having to deal with the differentiation between
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: those two. Yeah, it's funny at the head of feeling
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: you were going to mention that, because when we do
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: our our tour website there through through our old peals
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: at squarespace, Um, I always have to go back and
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: double check, and you're right, it usually is r E
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: it seems like. And I like the way that looks
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: on paper and on a billboard. Yeah, it looks very regal.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: It reminds you of like rich, yeah, rich, like umu
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: red deep red velvet curtains and things like that. It's
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: like an Evening with Josh and Chuck, not just Josh
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and Chuck comes to Josh and Chuck. If you one
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: who cares, you know, that's the E R version. The
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: R E version is like you said, in the Evening
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: with Josh and Chuck. That's right. Uh. So this all
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: came about from one man and his name was Noah Webster.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And at first I was thinking, wait a minute, did
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: mel Gibson play him in a movie? But I looked
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: it up and that was the guy who was writing
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the Oxford English Dictionary. Not know a Webster who wrote
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Webster's Dictionary? What book was that? A movie? Was that
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: The Man with Two Faces? No, it was, uh the
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Professor and the Madman. I think I have never heard
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of that. Okay, So I have, so I've heard the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: story before that there there was a dictionary out there.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I thought it was the American English Dictionary, not not
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the Oxford one. That like, there was a guy who
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: um was in an asylum for decades and contributed like
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: significantly to that dictionary, Right, that's the one. Yeah, I
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: haven't seen it, but I've heard I've heard good things
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't know was in it. Yeah, the famous anti Semite. Right.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So um, we're talking instaid about the other dictionary, not
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the Oxford English Dictionary, the American English Dictionary created by
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Noah Webster, who turns out to have been a bit
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: of a Polly math back in the eighteenth century. Cool dude,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: from what I understand, Yeah, he seems like a quite
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the renaissance man. He was born in Connecticut in seventeen
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: fifty eight, and after the Revolutionary War started in seventeen
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: seventy five, he was in college at Yale. War ends
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: he's uh in a militia, like a Patriot militia, graduates
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: and then becomes a teacher and then an attorney, and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: then started to say, your articles of Confederation or garbage
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: in the way they're they're laid out, and it would
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: be much better if you did these things. Yeah. I
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: couldn't find what he was um credited with as far
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: as that goes, although I did see um some free
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: speech stuff. He may have been a big advocate of
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: free speech. Well, he was a member of Anti Slavery Society.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So he was a founder of the Connecticut Society for
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the Abolition of Slavery. Yeah, so that tracks. And he
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: also helped found Amherst College in Massachusetts. But he's known
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: as a dictionary guy. Yeah. And he had this whole
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: thing where he felt like America needed to come into
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: its own intellectually or celebrate its culture more intellectually, and
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: that a good way to do that was to kind
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: of separate itself, um, education wise from the old British
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: system in the old British books and used brand new, um,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: beautiful American books. Uh. And he there weren't any at
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: the time, so he said about creating one himself. He
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: found out like, actually, little American school kids are learning
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: from the old British books, and he was very upset
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: about that. So he said, you know what, I'm going
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: to create something different. Yeah. And pre dictionary, which we'll
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: get to after the break, he wrote something called the
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: American Spelling Book, um, which was also referred to as
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: the Blue Backed Speller. I guess at a blue cover
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: on the back is the only I can think of,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: or it was referring to a character who had a
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: blue back in the book, maybe so, but it was
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: a big success. It's sold about a hundred million copies
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: by three which is just astounding. Uh. And we know
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: now because we have a book that is not sold
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: a hundred million copies. No, no, chuck, it was a
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: hundred million copies by three years. That's really astounding. And
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: it's still in print today. But it helps standardize American
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: English for teachers. And then he thought, this is great,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: but what I really want to do is write a dictionary.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: And we're gonna take a little break and tell you
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: about that result right after this. Sorry geh okay. So uh,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Noah Webster is riding high on his blue backed speller
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: in this excess of it, and he's he's done something
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: he wanted to do, which was, um, help d British
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: eyes American school kids learning. That was a good, good
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: first start. But then he said, you know, yes, I
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: believe the children are future. Teach them well and let
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: them leave the way, etcetera. But I also think that
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: we need to get to the adults as well. We
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: need to just basically create a tome, a text that
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: is the definitive guide to American English. Because everybody's running
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: around here saying things a little differently, but we're still
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: spelling them the British way, and that has to end. Say,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I know, ah, Webster, that's right. Uh. And it ended
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: up being that seventy thousand word dictionary of the American Dictionary.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, And American Dictionary of the English Language is
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the full title. And he said, you know the word color,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: it doesn't need that. You you don't hear it. We're
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: wasting inc drop it. Uh. Plow you want to plow
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a field, just go out in p l O W
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: that field. Don't p l O U g h that
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: field because that's a waste of time. Right. What you
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: want to do is go hit it with the W
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the p l O W and um. I'm very grateful
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: to him that we we have words like draft spelled
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: with n F rather than a U g H or
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: you know, plow spelled the right way um, and color
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: without a U or honor without a U. It all
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: makes sense. And I guess it had to do with um.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: The like I said, the way that people were pronouncing
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: words in America. We're still saying the same word, but
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: we were we were saying it slightly differently, So it
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: made sense to kind of alter the spelling. Um some
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: words he went after. They did not stick, though, did
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: they chuck? Yeah, it looks so funny on paper. I
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: wish they would have stuck. Because he proposed spelling tongue
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: t u n g, which for some reason just looks
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: inly dirtier. It looks it's sexual for some reason to
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: me and women, w O M e N he proposed
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: should be spelled w I M And I'm sorry w
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: I M M E N women. Yeah, which sends derogatory
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: almost like sounds dirty women, sounds like who cares kind
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: of spelling, you know what I'm saying. So I'm glad
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: that those two stayed the same. Yeah, and it just
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: looks very strange. Of course, had they made those changes,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: we would look at tongue t o in g u
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: e and think that looks very like draft d r
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: a U g h T. We would think that looks
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: weird because it's just what you know growing up. But
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: theater is what we're here to talk about. And theater
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: was one of those uh I think pre Webster it
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: was always are in that right, Yes, that was There
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: was no other way to spell theater except t h
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: E a T R E, and Webster came along and said,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: nuts to that. Yeah, swap them out, but it's this
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: is what an example of one that kind of half took.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: There is no correct way you can use either one.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: There is a notion within the world of theater that
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: if you're talking about the world of theater, you'd say,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: are you spell it with an R E? But you
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: actually perform at a theater with an E R And
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I think I kind of knew that. But that's not
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: even you know, the hard and fast rule, which I mean,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: that makes sense to me, But I don't think, Chuck,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I've ever encountered anybody who actually, like any any normal person,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: um like just walking around that believe that or that
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: held that that viewpoint of view. No, I mean, I
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: think I've heard that. Like I said, theater with an
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: R E might refer to the industry of putting on
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: plays and shows, but I've never seen anyone, right, you know,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: in the theater. We perform at a theater and then
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: spell that to different ways. Yeah, I just I've never
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: encountered it before. But it does make sense, and apparently
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: some people do kind of see see the world like that.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: But for the rest of us, we're just gonna stay
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: muddled and confused till the end of time, swapping out
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: R E and E R for theater because in the end,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. Whoever you're talking to is gonna
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. And if you're a prescriptivist,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: no descriptivists, that's that's language, that's what counts. That's right.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And I think the end result is hopefully sometime next
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: fall and winter you might be able to see, uh,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: spend an evening with Josh and Chuck at a theatra,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: right or if um, you're just kind of feeling super
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: American at a theater. Okay, Well, since we said theater
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: two different ways, I think everybody it's clear that this
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: is the end of short stuff, and short stuff says audios.
• 10:57
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• 10:59
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