It looks as if it is not clear who said it.
http://www1c.btwebworld.com/quote-unquote/p0000149.htm
<quote>
2) (Of England and America) ?Two nations separated by a common language.?
Sometimes the inquirer asks, ?Was it Wilde or Shaw?? The answer
appears to be: both. In The Canterville Ghost (1887), 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 Shaw as saying: ?England and America are two
countries separated by the same language?, but without giving a
source. The quote had earlier been attributed to Shaw in Reader?s
Digest (November 1942).
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?.
Inevitably this sort of dubious attribution has also been seen:
?Winston Churchill said our two countries were divided by a common
language? (The Times, 26 January 1987; The European, 22 November
1991.)
</quote>
The trouble with these 'references' that the Readers Digest and recent
newspapers are not exactly sound sources.
Mostly people seem to attribute it to Shaw - which means nothing. |
