Short Stuff: Is It Theater or Theatre?

And I love this because like when we go on live tour, Chuck, it's almost invariably theater, but um, there every once in a while you run up against the place of venue that spells it theater with the E er instead of R e um, and it's it's mind boggling, it's it's it's probably the worst thing that happens on tours that is having to deal with the differentiation between

those two. Yeah, it's funny at the head of feeling you were going to mention that, because when we do our our tour website there through through our old peals at squarespace, Um, I always have to go back and double check, and you're right, it usually is r E it seems like. And I like the way that looks on paper and on a billboard. Yeah, it looks very regal. It reminds you of like rich, yeah, rich, like umu

red deep red velvet curtains and things like that. It's like an Evening with Josh and Chuck, not just Josh and Chuck comes to Josh and Chuck. If you one who cares, you know, that's the E R version. The R E version is like you said, in the Evening with Josh and Chuck. That's right. Uh. So this all came about from one man and his name was Noah Webster. And at first I was thinking, wait a minute, did mel Gibson play him in a movie? But I looked it up and that was the guy who was writing

the Oxford English Dictionary. Not know a Webster who wrote Webster's Dictionary? What book was that? A movie? Was that The Man with Two Faces? No, it was, uh the Professor and the Madman. I think I have never heard of that. Okay, So I have, so I've heard the story before that there there was a dictionary out there. I thought it was the American English Dictionary, not not the Oxford one. That like, there was a guy who um was in an asylum for decades and contributed like

significantly to that dictionary, Right, that's the one. Yeah, I haven't seen it, but I've heard I've heard good things I didn't know was in it. Yeah, the famous anti Semite. Right. So um, we're talking instaid about the other dictionary, not the Oxford English Dictionary, the American English Dictionary created by Noah Webster, who turns out to have been a bit of a Polly math back in the eighteenth century. Cool dude, from what I understand, Yeah, he seems like a quite

the renaissance man. He was born in Connecticut in seventeen fifty eight, and after the Revolutionary War started in seventeen seventy five, he was in college at Yale. War ends he's uh in a militia, like a Patriot militia, graduates and then becomes a teacher and then an attorney, and then started to say, your articles of Confederation or garbage in the way they're they're laid out, and it would

be much better if you did these things. Yeah. I couldn't find what he was um credited with as far as that goes, although I did see um some free speech stuff. He may have been a big advocate of free speech. Well, he was a member of Anti Slavery Society. So he was a founder of the Connecticut Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Yeah, so that tracks. And he also helped found Amherst College in Massachusetts. But he's known

as a dictionary guy. Yeah. And he had this whole thing where he felt like America needed to come into its own intellectually or celebrate its culture more intellectually, and that a good way to do that was to kind of separate itself, um, education wise from the old British system in the old British books and used brand new, um, beautiful American books. Uh. And he there weren't any at

the time, so he said about creating one himself. He found out like, actually, little American school kids are learning from the old British books, and he was very upset about that. So he said, you know what, I'm going to create something different. Yeah. And pre dictionary, which we'll get to after the break, he wrote something called the American Spelling Book, um, which was also referred to as

the Blue Backed Speller. I guess at a blue cover on the back is the only I can think of, or it was referring to a character who had a blue back in the book, maybe so, but it was a big success. It's sold about a hundred million copies by three which is just astounding. Uh. And we know now because we have a book that is not sold a hundred million copies. No, no, chuck, it was a hundred million copies by three years. That's really astounding. And

it's still in print today. But it helps standardize American English for teachers. And then he thought, this is great, but what I really want to do is write a dictionary. And we're gonna take a little break and tell you about that result right after this. Sorry geh okay. So uh, Noah Webster is riding high on his blue backed speller in this excess of it, and he's he's done something he wanted to do, which was, um, help d British eyes American school kids learning. That was a good, good

first start. But then he said, you know, yes, I believe the children are future. Teach them well and let them leave the way, etcetera. But I also think that we need to get to the adults as well. We need to just basically create a tome, a text that is the definitive guide to American English. Because everybody's running around here saying things a little differently, but we're still spelling them the British way, and that has to end. Say,

I know, ah, Webster, that's right. Uh. And it ended up being that seventy thousand word dictionary of the American Dictionary. I'm sorry, And American Dictionary of the English Language is the full title. And he said, you know the word color, it doesn't need that. You you don't hear it. We're wasting inc drop it. Uh. Plow you want to plow a field, just go out in p l O W that field. Don't p l O U g h that field because that's a waste of time. Right. What you want to do is go hit it with the W

the p l O W and um. I'm very grateful to him that we we have words like draft spelled with n F rather than a U g H or you know, plow spelled the right way um, and color without a U or honor without a U. It all makes sense. And I guess it had to do with um. The like I said, the way that people were pronouncing words in America. We're still saying the same word, but we were we were saying it slightly differently, So it made sense to kind of alter the spelling. Um some

words he went after. They did not stick, though, did they chuck? Yeah, it looks so funny on paper. I wish they would have stuck. Because he proposed spelling tongue t u n g, which for some reason just looks inly dirtier. It looks it's sexual for some reason to me and women, w O M e N he proposed should be spelled w I M And I'm sorry w I M M E N women. Yeah, which sends derogatory almost like sounds dirty women, sounds like who cares kind of spelling, you know what I'm saying. So I'm glad

that those two stayed the same. Yeah, and it just looks very strange. Of course, had they made those changes, we would look at tongue t o in g u e and think that looks very like draft d r a U g h T. We would think that looks weird because it's just what you know growing up. But

theater is what we're here to talk about. And theater was one of those uh I think pre Webster it was always are in that right, Yes, that was There was no other way to spell theater except t h E a T R E, and Webster came along and said, nuts to that. Yeah, swap them out, but it's this is what an example of one that kind of half took. There is no correct way you can use either one. There is a notion within the world of theater that if you're talking about the world of theater, you'd say,

are you spell it with an R E? But you actually perform at a theater with an E R And I think I kind of knew that. But that's not even you know, the hard and fast rule, which I mean, that makes sense to me, But I don't think, Chuck, I've ever encountered anybody who actually, like any any normal person, um like just walking around that believe that or that held that that viewpoint of view. No, I mean, I

think I've heard that. Like I said, theater with an R E might refer to the industry of putting on plays and shows, but I've never seen anyone, right, you know, in the theater. We perform at a theater and then spell that to different ways. Yeah, I just I've never encountered it before. But it does make sense, and apparently some people do kind of see see the world like that.

But for the rest of us, we're just gonna stay muddled and confused till the end of time, swapping out R E and E R for theater because in the end, it doesn't really matter. Whoever you're talking to is gonna know what you're talking about. And if you're a prescriptivist, no descriptivists, that's that's language, that's what counts. That's right.

And I think the end result is hopefully sometime next fall and winter you might be able to see, uh, spend an evening with Josh and Chuck at a theatra, right or if um, you're just kind of feeling super American at a theater. Okay, Well, since we said theater two different ways, I think everybody it's clear that this is the end of short stuff, and short stuff says audios. Stuff you should know is production of I Heart Radios.

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