Quote:
Originally Posted by Polyglot27
Wasn't it Bernard Shaw who said, "England and America are two countries separated by the same language."
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Its source is disputed.
In
The Canterville Ghost (1887), Oscar Wilde wrote: ‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language’.
However, the
1951 Treasury of Humorous Quotations (Esar & Bentley) quotes Geroge Barnard Shaw as saying: ‘England and America are two countries separated by the same language’, but without giving a source.
Much the same idea occurred to Bertrand Russell (
Saturday Evening Post, 3 June 1944): ‘It is a misfortune for Anglo-American friendship that the two countries are supposed to have a common language’, and in a radio talk prepared by Dylan Thomas shortly before his death (and published after it in
The Listener, April 1954) - European writers and scholars in America were, he said, ‘up against the barrier of a common language’.
So it seems to have been an idea which various people have had.