# A People Without an Identity of Ideas Cannot Keep an Identity of Language by Noah Webster > “Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language.” > **— Noah Webster**, *Preface to An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828* ## Sources and Context - **Primary source:** Noah Webster, [Preface to *An American Dictionary of the English Language*](https://jacklynch.net/Texts/websterpreface.html) (New York: S. Converse, 1828), paragraph 7; Jack Lynch's transcription of the first edition. - **Exact original:** “Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language.” No editorial change. - **Context:** The same preface calls an American Dictionary “not only important, but, in a degree necessary” for “the people of this country,” and lists American institutional terms such as *land-office*, *land-warrant* and *regent of a university* that name things absent from England. - **Article use:** [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] adopts the sentence as the lexical form of the charter argument: a people that authors its own ideas must eventually author its own reference layer. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/War With Empire|War With Empire]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] - **Article:** [[articles/The New Dictionary of the Machine Regime|The New Dictionary of the Machine Regime]] - **Article:** [[articles/Cognitive Liberation Through Superior Parasitic Capture and Oppression|Cognitive Liberation Through Superior Parasitic Capture and Oppression]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Noah Webster|Noah Webster]] - [[wiki/An American Dictionary of the English Language|An American Dictionary of the English Language]] - [[wiki/Language|Language]] - [[wiki/Semantic Jurisdiction|Semantic Jurisdiction]] - [[wiki/Linguistic Relativity|Linguistic Relativity]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language.” — Noah Webster, Preface to An American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-noah-webster-identity-of-ideas-identity-of-language ```