– By Mike Sutton –
In 1944 people started to attribute the phrase ‘England and America are two countries divided by a common language.’ to George Bernard Shaw (GBS). One problem is they never cited the source and another problem is I’ve found the earliest source of the phrase on Google, which attributes it to GBS – but its written by someone who I can’t identify. It’s on page 40 of American Affairs: The Economic Record, Volume 6.
The mystery author writes:“George Bernard Shaw was responsible, I believe for the observation that England and the United States are two nations divided by the same language”.
Whoever wrote it and attributed it to Shaw is perhaps actually the best bet we may ever have for the true originator of this popular phrase.
Perhaps there is another database with someone falsely attributing the quote to Shaw? Perhaps there we will discover an earlier source. If not, perhaps the name of our mystery author in question will be revealed. If anyone finds out please leave a comment over at my twinned blog site on Best Thinking
The website “Misquotes” informs us:
This supposed quotation doesn’t appear anywhere in the copious writing of GBS. A similar idea was expressed by Oscar Wilde in The Canterville Ghost, 1887, some years earlier than Shaw was supposed to have said it:
“We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language”.
I found something some 54 years earlier than Oscar Wilde’s prose on this theme. It’s onpage 448 the 1833 Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in a discussion of the evolution of “Americanisms”:
“…we see a new phenomenon in the history of the world of two great nations separated by a wide ocean using the same language.”
The 1833 article in continues:
‘The mother country may yet claim, and perhaps her claim will be allowed by some Americans the privilege of a very rigid examination of American importations, before she allows them to be current coin of the realm; but to attempt to reject all new words that America produces would be both absurd and ineffectual. New wants and new circumstances are the parents of new terms, which perhaps, increase quicker there than in an old country. The main differences between the spoken and written English language as it exists in America and Great Britain appear to be the following pronunciation:- the use of words now obsolete in England or used in different senses.’
On which note, it rather amuses some of my English friends that our American cousins don’t realise that they have a political contender with apparently little sense and a rather silly name.
I think that Donald Trump has an odd squeezing look that matches his name.
The parenting site Netmums reveals all .
