Have you ever front at a news — likealthough , for example — and thought : There are justtoo many lettersin this word ? If so , congratulations : You have a small something in common with Theodore Roosevelt , generator of more than 30 books and 150,000 letters .
You know who else thought there were just too many alphabetic character in English words ? Philanthropist and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie .
In 1906 , Carnegie created , and financially support , the Simplified Spelling Board . concord toThe New York Times , Carnegie thought that English had the potency to be “ the world language of the hereafter , ” and that would serve take to globe peace .
Butaccordingto the Board , English was “ handicapped by one thing and one only — its intricate and disarray spelling , which makes it a teaser to the alien within our Bill Gates and a enigma to the stranger beyond the seas . ”
The Board decided to pursue a form of reform by omission : Drop letters that were unpronounced or hold unnecessary . Teachingwould be made easier , compose parallelism would be quicker , printing process would be more efficient , not to mention cheesy . One publisherestimatedthat using Simplified Spelling in the publication business would save up to $ 40 million — which is over a billion dollar in today ’s money .
The Board ’s propose reform were write and somehow found their way to President Theodore Roosevelt , who thought that what the plank was proposing made a fortune of sense .
He threw his livelihood behind their reform , which admit choppingalthoughfrom A - L - T - H - O - U - G - H to A - L - T - Planck’s constant - O and knock the spare S ’s and ED ’s from words likemissedandkissedso that they were spelled M - I - S - T and K - I - S - T , severally . atomic number 15 - H - A - N - T - type O - M became F - A - N - triiodothyronine - O - M. Cats would n’t P - uracil - R - R , they’dP - U - R. And so on .
But on August 27 , 1906 , when TR sign an Executive Order that made the Board ’s spelling reforms need in political science text file , he never could have predicted how controversial his action would be .
Simplified Spelling was n’t the only way TR take on language in his living — he buckle the pronunciation of words to get noticed , strike iconic idiomatic expression , and used the English words as a political prick . Just how did he use language to reach his trust oddment ? We ’re about to find out .
From Mental Floss and iHeartRadio , this isHistory Vs . , a podcast about how your favorite historical figures front off against their swell foes . I ’m your host , Erin McCarthy , and this week ’s episode is TR vs. Language .
By the time he became president , Theodore Roosevelt was a master of many nomenclature : He could read in French , German , Italian , and Latin ( though he call reading in Latin “ dreary labor ” ) . He alsospokeFrench and German , although his French was , in the word of honor of his Secretary of State John Hay , “ lawless as to grammar . ”
He also had a very strange speaking manner — so unusual that , according to Edmund Morris , it “ has the effect of entomb his remarks , like shrapnel , in the memory of the listener . ” Once they pick up what he ’s say to them , they do n’t forget it .
That ’s Arika Okrent , linguist and Mental Floss contributor , and the someone I call whenever I have a question about spoken language .
There aresomerecordings of Roosevelt speaking , but as Okrent notes , most of what we bonk about how he spoke is through other people writing about it . And whenever they talked about how he spoke , theyalsousually talked about his teeth , so we ’ll continue that all right tradition here .
harmonise to Morris , Roosevelt ’s “ blank and even ” tooth would “ chop up every word into clean syllable , air them forth perfectly mold but disjoined , in a jerkystaccatissimothat has no congress to the normal calendar method of speech . ”
One of TR ’s colleague add up it up by say , “ I always think of a humanity bite tenpenny nail when I think of Roosevelt wee-wee a speech . ”
His manner of speaking led some to consider that he ’d had a speech hindrance as a kid . A college classmatenotedthat when they purposely riled him up , he would “ sometimes drop off altogether the power of articulation , ” andaccordingto a workfellow in the New York State Assembly , “ he would open up his mouth and ladder out his tongue and it was difficult for him to speak . ” Morris notes that his diction was “ syncopated … sibilant consonant siss out like run away steam ; plosives force back the lip asunder with an audiblepfft . ”
Whatever the cause for how he spoke , Roosevelt leaned into it . As a young assemblyman , he ’d buckle the pronunciation of the wordspeaker , shout “ MR . SPEE - KAR , MR . SPEE - KAR ! ” over and over , sometimes for 40 second , to get the speaker ’s attending .
Interestingly , when he was out in the Dakotas in the mid-1880s , TR change his way of speaking , too . In his bookTheodore Roosevelt in the Badlands , Roger L. Di Silvestro quote thePioneer Pressas writing that “ The slow exasperating drawl and the unparalleled dialect the New Yorker feels he must employ when visit a less blessed portion of civilization have disappeared , and in their blank space is a unquiet , energetic style of speak with the bland accent of the West . ”
Whether or not Roosevelt was a ripe public talker is up for debate . In the 1940s , a grad student advert William Auburn Behl put that doubtfulness to those who had known him , and the reviews were … not favorable . Jeremy C. Young , author of the bookThe Age of Charisma , put these reviewstogetherin a web log office .
One person called TR ’s gesticulations and his luxuriously - pitched voice “ terrible , ” while another said he “ was n’t a great talker but one finger the force and magnetic force of his personality and … his great satin flower and legitimacy . ” As one diary keeper noted in 1900 , “ Theodore Roosevelt is a wonder as a nominee , more from his tremendous strong point , zip , force , and endurance than from finishing and grace of delivery or diction . ”
untried note that , in Roosevelt ’s epoch , most public figure , like William Jennings Bryan , used an emotional style of speaking call “ personal magnetism . ” But this was precisely theoppositeof what Roosevelt learned at Harvard from his rhetoric teacher , Adams Sherman Hill , who said that “ our feelings ought to be regulated by the facts which excite them . ”
Young says that Roosevelt ’s address “ were often wry , equivocal , and humdrum , ” because he ’d retool them over and over and then read the typecast speeches rather than speaking off the cuff , as Bryan did .
But make no misunderstanding : Even if his oral communication could be dull , TR definitely had a way with words . Hecoinedterms and musical phrase that we still employ today , like “ bully pulpit , ” “ nailing jelly to a wall”—he actually enunciate “ They might just as well ask me why I do not cop currant gelatin to the wall”—and the political utilization of “ my hat is in the band . ”
purportedly he ’s the one who called Maxwell House chocolate “ good to the last driblet . ”
One phrase we all think of when we think of TR is “ Speak softly and convey a big spliff , you will go far . ” He pronounce it was a West African proverb he was doting of , but according to the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs , there does n’t seem to be grounds that it was actually a West African byword .
He popularized many other words and idiom , like " strong as a bull moose , " " lunatic fringe , " " mollycoddle , " and " creep . " He also popularise the phrase “ weasel words , ” which originally referenced the fable that a weasel can take up the contents out of an egg while allow for the shell intact . He said he hear a acquaintance ’s brother employ it in reference to another somebody who could , in the sidekick ’s words , “ take a Bible and weasel it around and lactate the meat out of it like a weasel suck in the meat out of an orchis , until it do n’t stand for anything at all , no matter what it fathom like it intend . ”
It ’s a preferred phrase of Okrent ’s .
We ’ll be right back .
TR also used terminology to craftdevastatingly colourful insults : One supreme court justice was “ an amiable one-time fuzzy - wuzzy with sweetbread brainiac , ” while frequent presidential candidate and Woodrow Wilson ’s Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan was “ a professional yodeler , a human trombone . ”
Roosevelt called novelist Henry James a “ small emasculated people of mindlessness ” while Mississippi Congressman John Sharp Williams was a “ true honest-to-goodness - style Jeffersonian of the barbaric blatherskite variety . ” Ablatherskite , by the way , is someone who tattle a muckle without make a lot of sense . Burn .
This mastery of language may not have been evident in all of TR ’s speeches , but it was decidedly present in some of them . There ’s a reason why his 1910speech“Citizenship in a Republic ” or , as it ’s more normally known , “ The Man in the Arena , ” is still quoted more than a hundred after it was deliver :
“ It is not the critic who counts ; not the human race who point out how the strong mankind bumble , or where the doer of deed of conveyance could have done them better . The recognition belong to the human race who is actually in the arena , whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood ; who strive valorously ; who errs , and comes short again and again , because there is no effort without error and defect ; but who does actually endeavor to do the human action ; who knows the great enthusiasm , the heavy devotions ; who spend himself in a worthy case ; who at the in effect know in the end the triumph of high accomplishment , and who at the bad , if he fails , at least he break down while dare greatly , so that his seat shall never be with those cold and faint-hearted souls who know neither triumph nor defeat . ”
But it ca n’t all be smooth-spoken speeches anddee - lightfulinsults and catchy phrases . In his symmetry , Roosevelt used disparaging spoken language and slurs in regards to other races and nationalities . Thomas G. Dyer addresses TR ’s use of language like this in his bookTheodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race , noting that , “ While TR seemed to derive considerable pleasure from the frequent private use of racial and ethnic epithet , he rarely used the full term in world … The extent of this spoken language and the absolute frequency of its usage indicates the preoccupation with racial differences that Roosevelt and his contemporary had , but it also suggests Roosevelt ’s professed objectivity in thing of race should not always be taken at face value . ”
Henry Cabot Lodge , TR ’s wise man , sometimesscrubbed that language , along with some of TR’sinsults , from their published correspondence , so Lodge must have known that its utilization would not have painted TR in the best light .
Roosevelt alsofelt , in his Christian Bible , that “ We have room for but one language here , and that is the English language . ” He believed that immigrant loyal to America should absorb completely and be required to learn English , and thatonly Englishshould be teach in school .
In a 1916 speech to the National Americanization Committee , Roosevelt said that immigrant should become fully Americanized by learning English . This , he said , would give them more opportunities in America , and they would n’t be seen “ only as an industrial plus . ”
“ Let us say to the immigrant not that we hope he will learn English , but that he has got to learn it , ” Roosevelt say . “ permit the immigrant who does not learn it go back . ”
This type of posture , harmonise to Okrent , does n’t ponder the reality of what really occur when immigrant come to America .
Not to mention the fact that English is a frequent borrower of words from other languages .
In fact , one TR ’s best-loved words was take over from another nomenclature . We ’re talking , of course , aboutbully .
And then there are languages like German , which has so many words for which there ’s no English equivalent . My favorite iskummerspeck , a term for the system of weights you pull ahead from excited overeating that literally translates to brokenheartedness Sir Francis Bacon .
Before we get back to Simplified Spelling — the system by which words are reduced to their most canonical expression in spelling , a system that TR defend — I want to take one quick diversion .
In May 1918 , TR go to Springfield , Massachusetts , on a mission : To honor those Boy Scouts of Troop 13 who hadsold$1000 - worth of war bonds . It was there that he — a current giant of language — had an face-off with afuturetitan of language .
There were 10 boys being honored that May afternoon in the town ’s municipal auditorium . As Donald E. Pease write , “ Roosevelt go down the line congratulating each of the untested men , reprise a laudatory statement praising each boy ’s accomplishment and pinning a medal on the honoree ’s chest . … Each presentment was met with thunderous applause . ”
There was a problem , though . TR had only nine medals .
So when Roosevelt came upon the tenth male child on point , and had no laurel wreath to trap to his lapel , the understandably mix up former chairman bellowed to the scoutmaster , “ What ’s this small male child doing here ? ”
The boy ’s scoutmaster did n’t contain to explain the berth , just whisked immature Theodor Geisel off - stage . The incident gave the future Dr. Seuss unspeakable leg fright , and candidly , who can blame him ?
TR was n’t the first mortal to support a phonetic spelling system — Benjamin Franklin , Noah Webster , and Brigham Young had all advocated for spelling reform . Noah Webster , for example , is probably the main reason the letter U was take away from spellings of American words and the Cs were replaced with Ses , which are tell apart features between American and British English . Then again , he also paint a picture wespell machineM - A - S - H - tocopherol - E - N and fair sex W - I - M - M - E - N , so , you know , they ca n’t all be achiever .
So when Theodore Rooseveltissuedan executive order in August 1906 directing the Government Printing Office to apply the board ’s proposed spelling organization — what he called an effort to “ make our spelling a little less foolish and fantastic”—he was in pretty good company .
The Simplified Spelling board was exhilarate for sure : They even release a “ Roosevelt Fonetic Spelling Book”—that’sphoneticwith an F — after the order .
And here ’s the matter : The Simplified Spelling Board , Webster , Roosevelt — they all may have been onto something … variety of .
Well … here ’s why not : Simplified Spelling looksridiculous .
And that ’s exactly what the press and critic latched onto after Roosevelt sign the executive order . The rebound wasimmediate .
We ’re go to take a quick break .
After Roosevelt signed his executive order mandating simplified spelling in government written document , everyone gross out out .
A paper in Kentucky write , in barely legible spelling , “ Nuthing”—N - U - T - H - I - N - G—“escapes Mr. Rucevelt”—R - U - C - E - 5 - E - L - T. “ No study is tu hi fr”—that ’s T - U H - I F - R—“him to takle”—T - A - K - fifty - E—“nor tu lo”—that ’s T - U L - O—“for him tu notis”—spelled T - U N - atomic number 8 - T - I - S. “ He makes tretis”—T - universal gas constant - due east - T - I - S—“without the consent of the Senit , ” S - E - N - I - T. “ He enforces such laws as adjoin his approval , and fales”—F - A - L - tocopherol - S—“to se”—S - E—“those that du not soot”—do spell calciferol - U , suit spelled spelled S - atomic number 8 - group O - T — “ him … He now assales”—A - S - S - A - L - E - S—“the English langgwidg”—“L - A - N - G - G - W - I - D - G ” — “ constitute himself as a sort of French academy , and will see the light the spelling in a way tu soot”—T - U S - oxygen - type O - T—“himself . ”
The reaction overseas was n’t any better . One English paper compose , “ Here is the lyric of 80 million of a sudden vary by a mere administrative ukase”—that ’s a Russian word for arbitrary mastery , by the room , and it ’s usually reserved to describe the actions of a tzar . The report went on to say , “ Could any other swayer on land do this matter ? ” while another irritate , “ How dare this Roosevelt feller … dictate to us how to spell a language which was ours while America was still a savage and undiscovered country ! ”
Amidst the uproar , The New York Timessaid that , “ Roosevelt ’s spelling order has done him more damage than perhaps any other number of his since he became president . ”
It ’s no wonder TR wanted to simplify spelling . Though he purportedly had a photographic memory , he was a notoriouslybad speller — in fact , his married woman , Edith , joke that he supported the system because he did n’t know “ how to spell out anything . ”
Roosevelt spin the order as an experiment , writingthat if the “ little changes ” to the 300 tidings garner pop approval , they would “ become permanent without any quotation to what public officials or case-by-case citizens may sense . ” If they were not popular , he say the spelling would be dropped — spell D - R - O - P - T — concluding , “ and that it all there is about it . ”
But in the end , what Roosevelt wanted did n’t really matter — no one was having his foreign spelling . The Supreme Court resist to follow his order , and in December 1906 , Congress vote to get disembarrass of simplified spelling , compose — in normal spelling — that the government ’s written document “ should observe and adhere to the banner of orthography prescribe in generally accept lexicon of the English spoken language . ”
understandably defeated , TR withdraw his executive order , writingto simplify spelling proponent Brander Matthews , “ I could not by fighting have kept the new spelling in . And it was evidently risky than useless to go into an undignified competition when I was beaten … But I am mighty glad I did the matter anyhow . ”
Spelling finally returned to normal .
But if you think about it , in a way , Roosevelt was forwards of his time — the proof is in your textual matter messages , where T - H - atomic number 8 - U - G - H is almost for certain bowdlerize to T - H - O.
So if you ’re reckon to get noticed , here ’s a TR pro - tip : Play around with pitch , perforate those plosives , and instead of a demure “ excuse me ” to get someone ’s attention , a trashy “ demode - skwas - me ! ” might do . And on that note … TTYL !
CREDITS
History Vs.is hosted by me , Erin McCarthy .
This sequence was written by me , with fact check over by Austin Thompson . Joe Weigand vocalize Theodore Roosevelt in this episode .
The executive producer are Erin McCarthy , Julie Douglas , and Tyler Klang .
The supervise manufacturer is Dylan Fagan .
The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Lowell Brillante .
Special thanks to Arika Okrent .
To learn more about this episode , and Theodore Roosevelt , jaw MentalFloss.com/HistoryVs . That ’s MentalFloss.com cut H I S T O universal gas constant Y V S.
chronicle Vs.is a production of iHeartRadio and Mental Floss .
